Apparently my bike is "worn out" and I'm riding on "borrowed time."

[bizarro]

Huh..... 31+ year old bike..... nearly 70,000 miles.... and it's Italian.


I must be suicidal.

[mcoyote]

*chuckles -- well, here's how you might turn it to your advantage.

Don't shave for a few days, frump-up your gear, and go in and play the old-wizened-broken-down-clueless-biker thing. Do lots of off-color jokes and "help a brutha out" type stuff, maybe they'll give you free tires or something.

[GooseMan]

Yeesh! My 1991 Bandit must seem ANCIENT to them then! I bought it used (obivously...cant get a new one anymore!) with around 56,000km on it. The things been running perfeclty fine, except for a few minor hiccups here and there. All I've done to it was change the fluids, tires and done a vale check/adjust....thats it! Running the same sprockets and chain since I've got it (no idea how old they are, but them appear to be fine), and as far as I know, the engine was never rebuilt.

*shrug* I'd assume a newer, more modern bike should have no trouble getting to 100K and beyond! Hopefully my Bandit will hold out another few thousand km!  

[Wanderer]

My 03 FJR has almost 64k on it (Army deployments cut into my riding time), and aside from fluids and tires and spark plugs, it's needed a cam chain tensioner.  that's all.  Actually I lied, the battery died at like 46k. I did the valve check at 60k, yes a little late and all were well within factory spec.  Never been adjusted.  The bike as never even hiccuped.  I'd be really really disappointed if anything major went wrong before 100 thou and unless I ball it up somewhere, I bleieve I'll be in the saddle to watch the odo click 200k.  
I read a thing somewhere on the net a while back about a guy who took his old beat up ninja 600, drained the oil and coolant out, got the wheel off the ground and literally tied the throttle wide open ''until....''
He gave up and shut the bike down after 15 minutes. I read a corollary 'add-on' about 6 months later about the bike. After the stunt he refilled the fluids, and the bike has run just fine everyday since.  Modern bikes, those newer than about 25-30, years are relatively indestructable.  

[highside]

The reason sportsbikes don't last very long has a lot more to do with neglect and abuse than the potential life span of the bikes itself. Half the sport bikes I see seem to average less than 1500 miles a year, and I bet they get an oil chance once a year. That sort of life is hard on any vehicle. Now consider how many of these things get totalled well before they are worn out and it starts to become a rarity to see them crossing 25,000 miles.

The really terrible part of this is that it is REALLY hard to sell sportbikes with that kind of mileage on them. In the right hands there is a LOT of life left in that bike, but when your add is next to another add selling the same bike with 4,000 miles on it for the same price. The funny bit is that the higher mileage bike is probably a better value as it is more likely to have seen proper care and maintinence.

[keystonejenks]

Heck, I had 29,000 miles on my Sportster before I had to rebuild the bottom end  

Wouldn't have to if you'd stop taking it off of those sweet jumps.  

[keystonejenks]

Huh..... 31+ year old bike..... nearly 70,000 miles.... and it's Italian.


I must be suicidal.

Dude, you're living beyond the edge!!

[Giaka]

We have squids at work (gixxer, R1/R6, ZX riders) that ride maybe once a month that cannot believe I have almost 17,000 miles on my 2 year old CBR then I drop the bomb and tell them that's only half of the story, I also have 18,000 miles on my 2 year old concours. Seriously they think I loan my bikes out to friends because there is no way one person can ride that many miles in 2 years.   If I had more time there would be three times that many miles on BOTH bikes. One of our squids has a 2 year old Gixxer 750 with 1400 miles on it. I ask him why he doesn't ride it more and he says he doesn't want to wear it out. He has been told it will only last 25k and it will need a rebuild.  

[miles]

squids think 10K miles is an unbelievable amount of miles.
Squids also believe, that any bike more than 2 years old, is an antique, because its no longer the latest, greatest thing, therefore its undesirable
Squids are also morons *shrug*

A few years ago I traded in an 02 CBR 954 with 28,000 miles on it.  The service tech said that he was surprised to see a sport-bike in such good condition after so many miles.  I asked why.  He said that most sport-bikes are totalled or road-rashed heavily before they ever see that kinda mileage.  He was impressed and wasn't being a smart-ass.  I guess I have to agree with him.  It's not an engine failure that limits the life of sport-bikes....it's guard rails, curbs, and SUV's that take their toll on them.

There is your answer right there.  Those two think of an R1 as a squid bike (to which group they undoubtedly belong) and the idea of a bike that has survived that many years without being totalled or blown up is hard for them to fathom.



miles

[Snowbird]

You have a 2001 bike and it only has 25K miles on it? Sure it's not a Harley?  

[mxvet57]

low milage?

 i don't consider it broken in till it hits 50,000.

my truck has 265,000 on it, the SUV has 156,000 and the FJR just turned 66,000.  so as you can see i do get my moneys worth out of a vehicle