Midweek topic

[guest7]

A recent thought, as I trundle around on my ramshackle sidecar outfit, is this: Is it better to keep an old bike running (with the attendant piles of spares and crap in the garage) or to stick to one good newish machine that needs less maintenance (and less crap)?

I always thought I was clever buying up tatty XBRs for spares, but the bike I ride is not great and I have a garage full of tat. Even if I built an XBR out of all the best bits, it's still just a pile of 20 year old parts.

Recent events have demanded a dramatic clearing out of tat in my sheds and I'm starting to think that it would be much nicer to go out there and see one or two really nice bikes and not bare frames, odd wheels, boxes of CDIs and loose switchgear.

GC

[guest18]

Tough to say 

I have tried the (collection of) ramshackle "bargain" bikes and whilst you can do it cheaply it has the drawbacks you mention plus the time cost of constant, often relatively major repairs.

On the other hand if you go for new or nearly new you are often tied to getting it dealer serviced, in my case the dealer went right downhill and then combined with a well known local rip-off dealer  so then you choose between no warranty/reduced resale/trade in value or being ripped off every 4,000 miles!

The third way (shudder), is to buy a younger used bike... say two to three years old low mileage and clean... but you'd better be very confident about your luck and judgement because there are a lot of lemons out there which look very very nice with buyers eyes on! 

My current train of thought is that it is probably best to buy the type of bike carefully (big thumpers are untrendy enough to be a good choice!) eg, price has levelled off (at about £900 to £1200 for decent useable big thumpers just now I think), they are obviously used without being festering heaps of corrosion (he says looking sadly out of his window  ) and they are low to moderate miles.

I would use as an example a DR650 or similar, looking for pretty standard (save for things like crashbars, handguards, scottloiler etc etc) clean, around 15 to 20K miles with T&T and life in the tyres, chain, brakes etc. Smaller (eg 350) could be nice but the bigger ones are less likely to have been thrashed. Use it until 1. someone offers you what you paid for it or 2. it looks like it may be going to break something major or 3. you start wearing out not the bearings but the spindles etc, or hit more than 60,000 to 100,000 miles. (your choice).
Then sell it for whatever it'll get and buy something similar.

The workhorse 500 twins look particularly good choices for this, a few years ago I'd have said GT500/750 Kawasaki but they're too old now, if you want reliability (and for this you do) then buy somthing that is still made or stopped in the last few years. Spares for semi-moderns can be a pita!

Anyway, the scotch is rambling now (hic) so I'll shut up and go back to my housework 

[steveD]

My thoughts exactly. For one I use tools all week and the last thing I want to do when I get the opportunity to get out is to start fettling machinery. I used to make bikes from scratch many years ago and they were pretty succesful, but all older machinery that couild easily be modified and individualised. Jap bikes are not as easy. The old faithful SRX is incredibly reliable and gives me great pleasure, is very cheap to run, but all my servicing is done by my mechanic who has a splendid small business and you can eat food off his workshop floor and he is cheaper in my opinion to get work done than my daily rate. I just drop the bike off, tell him what I want doing and I get it back done, end of story. There isn't anything that he does that I cannot do myself but I am time poor and prefer to make money and enjoy biking.
I was going to do a full renovation on the DR750 but at the end of the day it would still have been an old bike and still not of any great value.
I have the opportunity to get a similar bike that will be state of the art, will also give me great biking pleasure AND he can do all of the servicing etc. Nostalgia is all well and good, the kickstart SRX will do for that, but the new one (whenever it comes) will be the tourer and well equiped for the task!

[guest7]

The workhorse 500 twins look particularly good choices for this,

I'll say, I just picked up a 17,000 mile Honda CB500 with Scott oiler, fork gaiters and crashbars for £500.

This is partly what set me thinking because the twin looks so much healthier than my old nail, being a sprightly 11 years old.

GC

[Cold Snail]

I started out with one KLR600 (for greenlaning) and now have another two bikes in bits sitting alongside the first, as it was cheaper to buy another 'project' than a few selected spares.
I've now picked up a 2001 XR400R, and while it's a better bike off road, it doesn't have the same character as an old A reg bike mixed in with a fleet of modern KTM's.

Oddly, the only reason I went with the newer XR was because it was simpler being air cooled.

Paul.

[guest18]

I'll say, I just picked up a 17,000 mile Honda CB500 with Scott oiler, fork gaiters and crashbars for £500...

EXACTLY the sort of bike I'm talking about! 

[Bruce]

AN OLD BIKE 20 YEARS OLD.!!!! That is very modern compared to my Norton I get my anorak on and go.

[guest7]

AN OLD BIKE 20 YEARS OLD.!!!! That is very modern compared to my Norton I get my anorak on and go.

Yes, but your Norton was made of real metals and built to last... not something you could ever say about an 80s Honda.

GC

[Andy M]

Can I offer another solution? This one will not be fashionable in the present company, but here goes.

Buy a new bike when the dealers are doing something stupid, run it until it is due major work then repeat. My example is the Bonneville. OK, I had to trade as the XT was useless with a pillion, but because the dealer was ****ed from the Rocket 3 launch he sold me a brand new bike for £1990. I had it dealer serviced twice, both of which resulted in letters to Triumph, one to call the Leeds dealer incompetent, the second to praise the guys in York. During this time I learned this model, built up the information needed to do various bits. In the last 3 years I've replaced the coil and done oil changes, but everything else has been cosmetic or a result of use (busted brake carrier).

To make this work of course requires an initial investment (I started with an inheritance) and then the ability to wait for the right deal. I used to be as bad as anyone else for seeing something and wanting one. If this is your thing you are better IMHO buying a £1000 bike on e-bay every 9 months and selling yours for similar money. "Renting" from e-bay is cheaper than "renting" from a dealer. On the other hand, if you can use what you buy, wait for drunken salesmen, hang on for interest free credit, buy unpopular models, hold out for a deal on low tech machines etc. you can win. Triumph sold me the Bonneville in the hope that I'd trade the base model for a Rocket 3 in about 6 to 18 months, they'll fall for the same trick again in a few years. In the meantime I have a bike with only my own bodges, a known history etc.

My 1 7/8 th's MZ's need almost constant attention. I've rebuild one engine (oil seals etc.) while the other was in the bike, rebuilt the top end, painted out the rust, sealed the exhaust etc. If I charged myself at any decent mechanics rate I'd be well out of pocket. A hundred pounds worth of spares and something like 50 hours labour on a £350 bike isn't economic. It gives me the bike I want, so it's worth it to me, but as transport it should have gone to the scrappers.

Andy

[guest27]

Depends on why you have a bike.

Is it for easy transport for work?  If so a fairly modern thing, not new as you loose too much.  Possibly one of the super scoots for the weather protection.

Is it a lifestyle crotchrocket statement - if so a brand new XYZ1000RRRRR

Playing at the weekend - what is your game, green laner, tourer etc

Do you like fettling and bodging - GC's pile of bits.

I have a shed full of crap, I love taking perfectly good bikes apart unfortunatly I am less inclined to put them back together.

So to my mind there are many more questions to ask before GCs original question can be answered.

In GC's case I would expect there is a need for more than one or two bikes, he needs work, play, dreams, stuff to doodle with / bodge and so on.

R

[guest7]

...he sold me a brand new bike for £1990.

 

Was that the total cost or was another bike XT part-ex'd against it as well?

Still, that's seriously cheap.

GC

[Andy M]

22 month old XT600E with 14000 miles on the clock (I used to ride then!) plus £1990 gets you a brand new 790cc Bonneville Black. It's about right but on the good side of right, the Bonneville Black is a real loss leader.

You used to be able to get similar deals on BMW F650's and Kawasaki ER's, you just have to put up with **** in the mail for years afterwards wanting you to trade your Girl's bike for something at five times the price a man would be seen out on. The only people who wouldn't play were Harley, the 883 Sportster was way overpriced and they won't deal, but I guess they still sell 'em to people who must have that badge?

Andy

[squirrelciv]

I've been scratching my head over this one too. Dolly's given me 4 good years of service with only pretty standard maintenance costs (tyres/chains/sprockets/battery etc) but I'm starting to wonder for how much longer? For example, at the last front tyre change, I noticed some corrosion on the rim (eyes peeled for the first sign of a crack!). There was the issue with the coil, the front caliper seize, all the cracked and battered body work. In short, soon she's going to want some major work and will it be worth doing?? 52,000 miles on a jap thumper motor is getting on a bit, and I add 11-12,000 a year now I'm on the commute.
Choices are,1) keep her rolling with second hand parts from ebay/doner bike. 2) Sell her soon and buy something with low mileage and more suited to the job of hauling my arse to work. Pretty much the same place as GC is at now. Can't quite come to an answer what to do and having got 11 months MOT left, I suspect I'll do nowt till doomsday is staring me in the face. Heyho (sigh!)

[bullet350]

i'll second the cb500 idea. i had one for about 18 months and did 20'000 miles. 220 miles to a tank (before reserve!), 55mpg ALL the time, tyres and chains that last and last and 100% reliability.

Those 20'000 miles included a visit to the pyreneese, a track day at Brands Hatch and lots of back road thrashing.

Consumables aside, it cost me nothing. I also avoided things like trying to trace bad connectors and replacing fork seals, bearings and all the other bits that wear.

I like tinkering with bikes, but only when its my choice to.

There does come a point at which any Jap bike has to be taken off the road for a kind of 'paritial-restoration' to repair all those little bits and prevent it turning into junk.

bullet350

[guest18]

Yeah my Mastiff is about to hit 40,000miles and five winters worth of Scottish salt means (as long as nothing major goes) I might as well keep her until about 60k, then it will be time to change, the value wont change between now and then and I know exactly what I have now. What I replace it with? Well that's a whole fresh can of worms