Arrival of Yamaha Alpha. My New Scooty


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Here, I am trying to explain buying procedure and pros and cons of the scooty I bought on Saturday 16th July 16. This is my first review so please bear with my mistakes. Technical specs are mentioned in below link.
http://www.yamaha-motor-india.com/scooter-alpha.html#spec[/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT]
I was in market for buying scooter since 3 months. Drove several of them and liked Hero Maestro Edge, but purchased Alpha, if interested to know continue reading. This is going to be long thread. I had splendor NXG bike and wanted to sell it or exchange. I tried selling it on popular web portals but offers I received were too less and people just seem to offer and say they will come to check bike and don’t turn up and don’t even bother to call and mention that they are not turning so wasted a month there. Hence, decided to exchange the bike with scooty and I started doing rounds of showrooms, authorized dealers and non-authorized ones, and small dealer but none of them offered the right price. I even went to second-hand scooter dealers for the exchange and even there deal didn’t work out.

Things continued thus for almost 2 months. Then one fine day, while reading review of alpha I stumbled across showroom called Anurag motors in one of the thread and thought of vising there as users rated quite good number of stars for them. I went to Anurag Motors, Bull Temple Road, Bengaluru showroom after office hours, i.e., at 7 30 PM, I met with SA called Mahesh and he explained scooty (only specs and price) and offers to my bike was reasonable by this SA. Hence decided to buy it from them and paid them the advance of 5000 Rs on Thursday 14th July. I was promised scooty on Saturday and they did deliver it on afternoon of Saturday.
Contenders
Honda Activa and its 3 varieties: The very famous and popular Activa was rejected outright because of maintenance costs. (My father owns one and I know of maintenance costs).
Suzuki Lets : I didn’t like the braking of Lets.
Mahindra Gusto: It was also ok but didn’t offer good rate to my bike.
Vespa: I didn’t consider Vespa as I wanted moderate cost scooty.
Hero Edge: Well-built and good one. Read several online reviews of it and our very own TAI member also has one and is mentioned as good scooty. However, Hero people (Sai Motors, Bimal Motors) were unable to offer good price for their own bike. Hero if you are reading this you lost a customer because of you were unable to purchase one of your bikes at decent price.
Even my mechanic suggested Yamaha for its decent pricing of spares. I only took his words and will comes to know by its usage.


Buying experience: I paid full money in cash minus the bike price on Saturday morning and went home to have breakfast and I was called back in the afternoon for the delivery. They kept their word there.
Total On road price was 60,500.
Accessories 1000.

Pros and Cons of Alpha scooty: I took the delivery of scooty on Saturday evening and went around for 10 Kms and found that there is lot of vibrations and called up SA and he asked me to come to service center to get this checked. It was already 7 45 PM, but I still went there (they work till 8 PM). I met a works manager there called Srinivas and he assured me that vibrations will reduce after first service. He said that there will be little bit of vibrations as this is scooty, which I am not buying as I know Maestro doesn’t have any harsh vibrations.

On Sunday, I rode it for another 50 Kms and found that heat insulation is not good in Yamaha and heat from engine percolates to seat and I have a heated seat, like they get in luxury cars (heated seat). Though it is bearable in winters, I am not sure if this continues it’s usable in summers. Whatever, I say now, they say let engine run and let first service be over. Keeping my fingers crossed to get these issues resolved.



Horn: It's sounds so meek that even a mosquito will not budge from its place. Forget moving bovines and bovine-natured people that ply on road, I need update horn.

Let some clicks to some talking. Sorry for the mobile pictures.
 

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Re: Arrival of Yamaha Alpha, my new scooty

Congratulations buddy. Please update us with more pictures when you can. Hope your vibrations go away as your engine runs-in. Would additional seat covers be of any help reducing engine heat from underneath? Can't believe Yamaha missed such a basic thing during their factory and on-road tests before launch.
 
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thanks prabhagar. I will update more loop holes of bike and will post this link on Yamaha Facebook's page. I expected more probably because of Maestro Edge. I am proud to say that for a change an Indian company is offering good product for us.
 
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Hi,
Congratulations on your new Yamaha Alpha. Wishes to clock many more miles without issues.
Hope the heat and vibrations will come down and make your ride more fun.

Service center people were not up to mark in most of the places. Now days showrooms got increased and sale too. There are not good mechanics in all the places. Oil and Oil filter changes is not a mechanic work as they describe. There were very few service who really work for customer satisfactions.
 
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Panel Gaps: I have observed that Gusto is better fitted product altogether. Even Honda Activa and other scootys have panel gaps. Few pictures to show.

Also, Yamaha claims that it has class-leading:rolleyes: space under the seat for use. However, I am not able to put in my full-sized helmet in it. Was Yamaha expecting people to wear half helmet? I can put same helmet in under the seat in my Dad's active. Yamaha also puts a disclaimer in owners manual that user may not fit in all the helmets. Come on Yamaha, by putting a disclaimer, you can't shun from the responsibility of providing a decent boot space to it's users. What's the use of 21 Ltr space if I can't place my full sized helmet?
 

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@MoRa I am surprised that Activa is high maintenance. One of my friend has been using Activa for over 2.5 years and he hasn't faced any problems involving high maintenance charges. The only grouse is engine vibration sporadically in low speed. I have ridden it and find it amazingly stable even at over 80kmph in cross winds. The acceleration surprises many bike riders who frantically try to catch up.
 
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yes, rselva, when my dad's Activa came for rebore, it's costing me quite high to replace engine parts. I am now looking for new engine itself in scrap yards to fit into Activa, hence I abhor Activa. Even my mech says Activa's maintenance is high. Yes, I agree new ones are fun to ride but once the maintenance starts it eats up a lot of money.


Also, I got steel protective grills, steel tips of handle (black in color) and mat fitted to my scooty last week in JC road. Will upload pics shortly.
 
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I got scooty serviced last week at 660 Kms on odo. I got the engine oil and gear oil changed. total damage to wallet is 375. Oil + consumables. No change in NVH. Spoke to MSP Motors where I serviced, they have asked me to visit again.
 
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Visited MSP and got scooty checked by Floor supervisor there by name Vasu. Still there is heat issue.


Reached 1000 Kms milestone today. Time to run it at 60 Kmph.[:)]
 

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Congrats for your new Purchase, enjoy the Ride [clap]

Even my mechanic suggested Yamaha for its decent pricing of spares. I only took his words and will comes to know by its usage.
Sometimes we should not blindly believe mechanics [roll] they prefer those bikes which they can repair easily with any sub-standard parts and make a quick money.
Hope you know your mechanic very well and trust him

Buying experience: I paid full money in cash minus the bike price on Saturday
Did you ask for Test Ride before making final decision and making full payment and were you denied test ride by the dealers [surprise]

Pros and Cons of Alpha scooty: I took the delivery of scooty on Saturday evening and went around for 10 Kms and found that there is lot of vibrations
On Sunday, I rode it for another 50 Kms and found that heat insulation is not good in Yamaha and heat from engine percolates to seat
Horn: It's sounds so meek that even a mosquito will not budge from its place.
I believe you should have asked and taken a test ride to know the Cons and Pros before buying the bike. We can not completely believe these SAs words of vibrations going after few thousand KMs, these vibrations are sometimes very annoying and in the long run we will have very bad experience
 
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Congrats for your purchase. You could have considered Wego or Jupiter as well before finalizing a vehicle. [:)]

Good you didn't go for Gusto. The FE is horrible and the spares are costly too. Showrooms are very rare in every city. There is only one showroom for whole Pune/PCMC area. There were few showrooms in Pune, but they probably shut down due to low sales.

Regarding heated seat, check for cool mesh seat covers from Yamaha. They are the ones who invented the cool mesh seat cover. The cool mesh seat cover for FZ16 made me poor by 1200 rupees, but trust me its totally worth it. The quality is ages ahead of the one we get on the road side.

If Yamaha doesn't have the cool mesh seat cover for Alpha, go for the road side one. It will at least solve the issue 100%.

Surprised that a product from Yamaha is facing vibration issue which the service guy are not able to solve properly. Did you try different Yamaha service center for this issue?
 
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Congrats for your new Purchase, enjoy the Ride [clap]



Sometimes we should not blindly believe mechanics [roll] they prefer those bikes which they can repair easily with any sub-standard parts and make a quick money.
Hope you know your mechanic very well and trust him



Did you ask for Test Ride before making final decision and making full payment and were you denied test ride by the dealers [surprise]



I believe you should have asked and taken a test ride to know the Cons and Pros before buying the bike. We can not completely believe these SAs words of vibrations going after few thousand KMs, these vibrations are sometimes very annoying and in the long run we will have very bad experience
1) yes, I have taken test ride and that scooty was butter smooth. I was impressed by the smoothness of engine. Yamaha is easy to repair that is quite well known. My mech is pretty decent till date and hopefully will remain to do so.

2) No denial for test ride. I took test ride before purchase.

3) For 1000 KM service I gave it in MSP Yamaha from where I took test ride. My scooty still has vibrations and the test ride vehicle had 17k on odo. I think I have long way to go reduce vibrations.

Congrats for your purchase. You could have considered Wego or Jupiter as well before finalizing a vehicle. [:)]

Good you didn't go for Gusto. The FE is horrible and the spares are costly too. Showrooms are very rare in every city. There is only one showroom for whole Pune/PCMC area. There were few showrooms in Pune, but they probably shut down due to low sales.

Regarding heated seat, check for cool mesh seat covers from Yamaha. They are the ones who invented the cool mesh seat cover. The cool mesh seat cover for FZ16 made me poor by 1200 rupees, but trust me its totally worth it. The quality is ages ahead of the one we get on the road side.

If Yamaha doesn't have the cool mesh seat cover for Alpha, go for the road side one. It will at least solve the issue 100%.

Surprised that a product from Yamaha is facing vibration issue which the service guy are not able to solve properly. Did you try different Yamaha service center for this issue?
Thanks Rahul401, I will enquire about cool mesh seat. Yea, I gave for first service to MSP Yamaha, where I test drove a really smooth Alpha. Vibrations do still exist in my scooty when it's idle, but I can make out that engine sound has smoothed out.
 
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Started my scooty after 3 weeks, as I do not use it for office commute on a daily basis. Suddenly, I started smelling petrol around me and thought smell might be due to long interval between usage of vehicle. However, when I bent down and saw, petrol was oozing out in copious quantity, I called up service center and asked them to pick up and check it. I am hoping that it's not due to rat bites, didn't find any droppings near scooty, keeping fingers crossed.
 
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