Janus motorcycles?

First saw them this morning on a news program.  All hand made in Goshen, Indiana; run about $7k.

I looked into them a bit about a year ago, glad to see they're still around.

I feel like they need to add a 500 to their lineup. I'm not really a fan of bikes that can't handle highway travel.

By all accounts beautifully made but dismissed by most as a pretty 'toy'. The diminutive engine simply isn't up to more than urban/suburban riding. I recently watched a documentary on Prime or Netflix about a guy who bought one to go on a ride with a legally blind friend of his across the country. It broke a few days into the trip and he wound up replacing it with a used metric bike. I think it failed mostly because he was using it for a purpose it wasn't built for.

The price point is simply too high for what it is. You can buy a Royal Enfield twin for slightly less than that and have a real motorcycle. Even a RE Bullet can deliver more while still providing a rustic riding experience. I wish them success but they really need at least a 500cc engine.

Beautiful bikes.   I accidentally found their shop when I answered a CL ad for a G7S for sale about 8 years or so ago. 






 Good people, with well built bikes.  As said, not a interstate bike, but not all bikes need to run the interstate to be fun.

Ddavidv, what was the blind guy riding?

He was in a sidecar. His buddy was the pilot. As soon as I saw them attaching the sidecar to the Janus I shook my head and predicted (correctly) imminent failure.

914Driver said:

Ddavidv, what was the blind guy riding?

what you did there.   i see it.

They look cool... but a Chinese Honda clone and crappy linkage front end?  For $7k I could have two or three old Japanese bikes which deliver about the same experience and are probably equally reliable.

I really want to like Janus bikes, but the 68 mph top speed would keep me from buying one, especially when CL is full of $1500 Rebel 250s that will go almost 80 mph.  You buy a Janus and say to yourself, "I'll be fine never getting on the freeway," but sometimes you have to.

I'd also like to know who makes Janus's Honda CG250 clone engine.  CSC Motorcycles tells anyone who asks that they source their CG250 engines (and most of their bikes) from Zongshen - one of China's better small engine manufacturers.  I'd feel a lot better knowing my engine was made by someone like Zongshen or Lifan than some fly-by-night outfit.

You know what would be cool?  A Janus with a Suzuki Savage 500 engine.

You might not ever need to get on the freeway but I will guarantee you that, sooner or later, you'll find yourself in a bad situation that you want some power to get yourself out of.

I've been riding for 35 years.   I can't recall ever needing power to get out of a "situation"

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere the engines they use are Zongshen.

Really all you are paying for is a hand built motorcycle with attention to detail.

If you truly want a vintage riding experience you can get it with a Royal Enfield Bullet for a few thousand less. Similar performance, lower price and no Chinese engine...though you may view India as equivalent to China.

I have less than $3000 in my old pre-unit iron barrel model. It isn't fast but I generally don't care. It looks the part and provides an authentic 1950s riding experience from something built in 2007.

I could own two of them for the price of one Janus. The cheap chrome and sloppy pinstriping really isn't enough detriment to make up the difference in cost.

Video about it for anyone who is interested:  Royal Enfield Bullet 2007

Caveat, I don't have a licence so I have no experience to speak from, but I have a serious Q about how much power a bike 'needs' vs peoples perception of need.  I keep hearing people saying bikes like this are dangerously underpowered, and that even not on the freeway you 'need' more power.  How much is that?

I know in the UK you can't apply for a motorbike licence until you're 17, and then you are restricted to 11 kW (15hp) until you pass your test when you are allowed 15kW (20hp) until you are 19.  You are then allowed up to 35kW (47hp)  It's not until you are 24 that you can ride anything you want.  That was all done specifically for safety and to reduce accidents.  Now, a lot of those accidents were probably caused by young guys (and I assume it's mainly males) wrapping themselves around inanimate objects with alarming frequency due to stupidity, but it apparantly works there.  How much power do you really need?  

Please note, I am not proposing a limited graduated system for here, nor am I saying it's correct.  I am just honestly wondering how much poewr is really needed and what is too little or too much?

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

I rode three different motorcycles to work this week (commute is backroads and a few miles of higher speed multi lane stuff) with varying power levels.  The one I rode this morning (NX250) is the least powerful of the three at around 25hp- it's enough to work well in traffic up to about 65mph, and flat out it can get me up to around 85-90mph, but it's pretty tapped out up there and makes highway travel a little bit scary since you can't just get on the gas to speed up and get away from a car merging into you or slot into an open spot.  I'd say 25hp is "enough" but it's close to the minimum of what I'd want on my commute.  I could live with less if I were riding exclusively in a town or city, although I still wouldn't be comfortable on something like a Grom (10hp) and would want more scoot- it's not a pleasant feeling to be hemmed in by traffic, with a huge truck on your ass (if I brake hard am I going under?) and unable to accelerate any faster.

At around 50hp, the Pegaso I rode earlier in the week was a much more comfortable place to be in traffic- no problem accelerating and could cruise happily at 75-80mph with enough power on tap to move around instead of just tucking down and praying not to be run over.

The other bike had enough power not to be relevant to any sort of discussion about minimums.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

Interesting. Funny that I was 22 before I had a car that topped 50hp and drove thousands of miles on motorways at or above 70 mph with 39hp!

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

It's the invisibility factor that makes it scary, not an overall inability to go that speed.  When everyone cuts you off, tailgates you, pulls out in front of you, etc, having the option to accelerate out of the situation (or re-accelerate after jamming on the brakes and avoiding) makes things a lot more comfortable.

Adrian_Thompson said:

Caveat, I don't have a licence so I have no experience to speak from, but I have a serious Q about how much power a bike 'needs' vs peoples perception of need.  I keep hearing people saying bikes like this are dangerously underpowered, and that even not on the freeway you 'need' more power.  How much is that?

Motorcycle equivalent to the towing requirements of Americans.

Those are high priced Chinese bikes.

Suprf1y said:

Motorcycle equivalent to the towing requirements of Americans.

LOL

It's the usual disconnect between 'want' and 'need'.

For a lot of riders motorcycles are a thrill, so they expect thrills generated by mo powah. Most modern 250cc bikes are capable of reasonable speeeds up to 60-70 mph (Suzuki TU250X for example). They don't provide vision blurring acceleration though, which is what a lot of motorcycle peeps want in their machines.

My slightly portly, way-under-100HP Triumph Bonneville is a perfectly capable bike for just about any riding. It will happily do 70-80 mph on the highway provided the wind blast from the lack of a windshield doesn't knock you off of it. Yet I read a lot of people complaining they are slow.

My Tiger 800 has a delicious (to me) power delivery and is plenty fast for this graying geezer. Again, others will opine you need the 1200cc model because the 800 "doesn't have enough". I've made arbitrary rules for bikes that they must be under 500 lbs and under 1 liter because I now know I don't need more power or weight (and those two things usually go hand-in-hand.

My 23 HP Royal Enfield...well, that is a bit of a traffic hazard on anything but slow country roads or in-town use. But it's essentially an antique, like driving a Model A Ford.

Cooter said:

I've been riding for 35 years.   I can't recall ever needing power to get out of a "situation"

I've been riding for close to 50 years and I agree.  If anything, brakes are more important for getting out of situations.

ddavidv said:

By all accounts beautifully made but dismissed by most as a pretty 'toy'. The diminutive engine simply isn't up to more than urban/suburban riding. I recently watched a documentary on Prime or Netflix about a guy who bought one to go on a ride with a legally blind friend of his across the country. It broke a few days into the trip and he wound up replacing it with a used metric bike. I think it failed mostly because he was using it for a purpose it wasn't built for.

I watched that movie over the weekend - it's called The Flying Dutchmen and it's available on Prime.  The Janus he used was actually their original 50cc model.  Why he thought he could ride a 50cc bike with a sidecar, a little luggage, and two grown men from Michigan to the Pacific Coast is beyond me.  He suffered catastrophic bearing failures on the rear wheel and the sidecar wheel and replaced the Janus with (what looks to me like) a Yamaha Maxim 650.  Not surprisingly, the Yamaha got the guys to Oregon just fine.

So, you're right:  this crazy guy used a glorified moped for a purpose it was never built for.

Here's Janus' statement about the movie.  Ain't no way I'm reading the whole thing - I think it says what I just said in a much more verbiose manner:
https://www.janusmotorcycles.com/journal/2018/7/11/the-flying-dutchmen

In reply to Adrian_Thompson :

As with cars, the answer to “how much is enough?” depends on weight, gearing, and expected use. If we continue with cars for a moment, a Lotus Seven wouldn’t be top candidate for comfortable motorway cruising anyway, so with 50-60hp and a 4.7 or 4.8 final drive, it could be reasonably peppy on backroads. A four-door sedan is expected to cruise at 70mph, even when loaded, and not be turning a zillion rpms, so it will likely have a tall final drive, and would never work with 50-60hp. The other variables is why some guys feel fine with 25hp bikes, and other guys with other goals talk about ‘needing’ 100hp.

It should be mentioned that I’m not the typical American motorcyclist, I ride cautiously on the street, and I tend to love the challenge of riding little lightweight bikes. My dad has a ‘97 Honda Dream 50 AC15. I haven’t ridden it yet, but he reports it is great fun for riding around his town of a few thousand people on the end of a peninsula. It weighs 180 pounds and has about 6hp. His initial gearing setup would do about 50mph, rpm limited. When he needs to maintain 45-50, he says it is awkward running it continuously at 500rpm shy of redline, so he is currently playing with gearing and hoping acceleration won’t drop off too terribly. I can’t imagine riding this bike in my city.

For my use, on a lightish bike, let’s say 300 pounds or so, with adequate gearing to go 70-75mph and still be at least 2500 rpm below redline, I’m going to want 30-35hp as a minimum. This bike should accelerate as well as most typical cars on the road, and could do some highway if needed. The same bike with the same gearing at 65-70hp feels genuinely quick. If we move the goalposts and make it a comfy highway bike, it is going to weigh more like 450-500 pounds, and have much taller gearing, and the same 70hp goes from being fairly quick to really marginal.

All of the bikes are looking so nice. I will visit their website when I am free. Thank you!

To me the Janus looks like a bike specifically aimed at city-dwelling hipsters. 

In reply to Ian F :

And there's a market for that, so more power to them. There are a LOT of boutique electric bikes/motorcycles in that realm too. I'm a fan of small batch transportation art.