How Much Mileage Can A Bike Stand?

[gbags]

Hi All,

I ride an 800 GS, which is seven years old and has 33,000 miles on the clock. It’s been serviced properly and taken care of but a lot of my miles have been two up.

Next year I want to take the bike away for a very long trip, again two up, and I’m wondering if my bike has the legs.

How long do people reckon the average 800GS ought to last? One hundred thousand miles? More? Less?

Cheers

Graham

[Steve T]

Mikey over on UKGser has covered nearly 130k on his, taking it too far and distant lands as well as local-ish tours.

Worry not - keep it properly maintained and it'll see you right for many more miles yrt.

Steve T

[Teflon Jnr]

My 650 versys has 41k miles on it it's 8 years old and still goes as well now as it did when I got it a chap on the versys forum has over 120k on his and says it's still as good as new

[chipy]

My S10 has now done over 85000 in six years. A friend has a Fjr that has just done over 250000 and is still going strong .

[daveuprite]

It's a good question. All depends on maintenance I guess. Plus the fact that some engines really do seem to be built more bullet-proof than others.

I've owned a few GSX1100 / GSXR1100 variants and those engines were very strong and many bandits etc have huge mileages. I also had a mate with, believe it or not, a Ducati 750SS with over 100k on the clock (pretty unusual I would have thought).

Don't know about the GS800s but they are understressed so there's no good reason why they shouldn't last well.

[AustinW]

the engine will outlive the rest of the bike by far, in my experience anyway. Paint on engines and frame will lift and the exposed metals corrode, which although not terminal makes the bike look very scruffy and devalues it hugely. Electrical stuff gets water and salt in it and connectors, earths, and the wire itself corrodes leading to weird intermittent electrical problems. Fixings corrode, and panels fairings and the like become bad fits. Dismantling the bike for service or repair becomes a nightmare. Shocks and forks wear out, chrome and alloy get pitted, long term consumables need replacing (clutch, discs, cush drives, brake calipers,), various seals will need replacing, starter motors wear out and so on. Meanwhile the engine continues to purr away with no special maintenance. If you can live with the scruffiness and the extra work involved when you work on it, budget for a few replacement items every now and then, and slight degree of unreliability from the electrical side then the bike should be good well past 6 figure mileages.

[Heff]

Regular maintenance is the key and neglect is the killer

Look after it and it will look after you

I sold my last GS with nearly 100k and it never let me down

I’ve seen GS’s with galactic mileage’s one had over 400,000, that’s not a typo 400k

Ride on and don’t worry yourself

[sprintster]

As others have said the engine will still be going strong when the rest of the bike is looking scruffy.No one would expect a car engine to be knackered after 30k miles.I'm planning on going to Italy next year on my 13 year old,32k mile Triumph.I sold my last Triumph with 60k miles on it so I've got no worries about it managing.

[Tink]

I was wondering about mileage myself.... As I've got chance of a Honda VFR800 Vtec 2004 model with 65'500 miles .... Has anyone had any experience with these bikes??? What would you value it at??

[92kk k100lt 193214]

Went to France in September, on the 84 K100RT, it passed 86,000, 87,000 and 88,000 miles when I was down there, now over 89,000. I bought it with 36,000 miles on it.

Its good for same again. I was planning on doing same again next year by which time it would have been well over 100k miles except that I added a K1100LT........and put 2,000 miles on it in the 4 weeks I have it.

Key is maintenance and knowing what components are likely to fail and paying attention to them.

Bought my K100LT with over 90,000 miles on it, never let me down.