If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to buy an old Rokon Scout 2x2 motorbike and thoroughly test it out, then YouTube channel 2Vintage has just the thing for you. This guy likes to get his hands on whatever random bikes strike his fancy—and because he has the skills, tools, and patience to figure out what’s wrong, most of the time, he’s able to score some pretty sweet deals because he’s able to fix things up when necessary. 

This Rokon Scout, though—it’s a little different, and not just because it’s a 2WD bike. As you’ll see at the beginning of the video, it’s clearly running. It’s a 135cc, two-stroke, single-cylinder engine, complete with a teeny, tiny carburetor. The aluminum wheels were constructed to hold a rider’s choice of fuel or water, for those long days outside when you might need one or both of those things. 

Top speed is a blistering 35 miles per hour—and really, this isn’t a bike that you’d want to go particularly fast on. It has three gears, accessible via a hand-operated selector on the right side of the bike. The low gear will have you go around five miles per hour, while high will get you up to the 35-ish range. Since it’s a 1982, it has a pull start (later models got both a pull and an electric start), as well as a plastic fuel tank. According to 2Vintage, enough people didn’t like the plastic tank that Rokon went to an aluminum tank later on, but the plastic is kind of nice because it can’t rust. 

The transmission is interesting—a tiny, belt-driven unit that’s hidden away under a side panel. If you’ve looked at transmissions on scooters before, it’s similar—although the belt is extremely tiny by comparison). Of course, the entire drivetrain is much different than anything else, involving a shaft and a separate chain drive for the front wheel. After he gets it home, 2Vintage does a thorough walkaround to show off the way this thing works, shortly before firing it up and taking it for its first true test ride. 

It takes some effort to get started, but does eventually fire up. There’s a first ride directly outside the garage, just to make sure there are no major issues that need to be tended to immediately. Then, it’s off to a nearby area where there are hills and snow on the ground.  

The little Scout, it turns out, will do pretty well going up hills, as long as it’s in the correct gear and is getting enough gas. At some points, 2V had to put the choke back on, as it seems there may be a fueling issue (possibly a dirty carb) that’s starving the poor thing when it tries to go uphill. Putting weight over the front wheel helps as well, and I’d be curious to know if the added weight of fuel or water in the front wheel would help it get a little more purchase in a situation like this. 

In any case, in about six inches of snow, it will do uphills fairly well. By the end of the day, after testing out its towing capacity with a little trailer, unfortunately the front wheel is no longer working. That means 2V will have to take it back to the garage, take it all apart, and find out what’s wrong—and also show us the process in the next video. I mean, it’s a bummer if you want to ride it, but is it a bummer if you want to know how it works? Definitely debatable, and probably depends on how bad the problems are, and how difficult and/or expensive they might be to fix. 

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