MANY, MANY Goldwings have certified mileages in excess of 500,000 miles and still on the road. Not to mention the Guiness record for the longest motorcycle world tour is held by a Wing. Just my $.02

TO save a lot of dialog you may wish to surf therough "Motorcycle Registries" Motorcycle Registries, where hundreds of folks have input to almost everything made. Check out the Wee-Strom and some others for a surprise. = JJ

I hear that Honda C90/Cubs tend to survive practically everything, even drops from a 5 story building and being run on palm oil...

Anyway: A few Guzzis I know of have some pretty high mileage, e.g. a 1973 V7 Sport with more than 300' miles on the clock. A broken piston ring at 275' and a rear drive rebuild at 250' were the major faults reported by the owner. There are a bunch of those bikes which have passed 100' miles. As we know, Guzzi's engines are pretty durable. Now, the electrics, on the other hand... Most of the high mileage Guzzis have had a major rebuild in this department. I'm about to rebuild the electrics on my otherwise perfectly working Quota to take it to 100' miles and beyond.

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HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

I would say the Honda Blackbird - apart from odd cam chain tensioner issues and rectifiers on the early ones there are loads about with massive miles on . Bike mag this month did survey and concluded that they are / were the most reliable bike probably ever . As for Bmw i dont think so and i have owned a few in my time but although they are good they arent put together like the XX
Still horses for courses

is the one with a loving owner who tops up the oil, cleans the filters and checks the valve clearances..

The one with an owner who doesnt rag her from cold or let her overheat. Who greases her bearings and oils her cables. Who polishes her paint and wipes off the flys....

That counts out my bikes then

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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

My 93' ST1100 ABS has 183,000 miles on it with no engine repairs. It's my 2nd ST1100.
The rear drive pumpkin is showing signs of wear and the steering head bearings needed replacing along with the wheel bearings a while back.

I just got back from a 15,000 mile round trip to Alaska and back to NYC without a hick up. Even with this mileage I am tempted to ride it to Ushuia next year.

Throw this model in the list of LD low maintenance platforms.

I like the link ,great to compare bike per bike, I had my first BMW years ago in France and bought it used from the police, after 100000 miles done by me I sold it ( and regret it) I had many bikes and agree with the K ( I had one too) but the BMW bikes are far from these (unfortunetly because I own a R1200GS 2005 with 25000 miles problem free), my old bikes KLR650,XR,Tenere.... were more reliable because less complex. I love my GS but I am preparing for a 2up RTW trip starting from the usa>SA>EU>africa>Asia...and will certainly buy a DL1000. I love my gS but there are so many components that they are prone to failure. I was tempted to buy a old bemmer but spending so much time and $ to drive a 20 years old technology didn't make sens to me.

If you are ever stuck by the roadside and need some impact maintenance, you might be tempted to use a rock. This five million year old technology still works and is affordable.

Agree with you oldbmw , I went all arround India 2 up this year with a Royal Enfield ,fun ride and old tech, easy to fix ( with a rock ) but I will not enjoy a RTW 2 up with it.

Did anyone here read the article in MCN some time back, about the courier called Stan who had a vfr, done 400,000 miles on the first engine, got another engine put in and did another 400,000+. I think he changes the oil once a week, but other than that just the usual. His parting comment was that he was now running a ' low millage' Blackbird, with 181,000 miles on it.

Hi, just my tuppence worth, but I know someone who rides an R6 (a 2004 I think) to work 5 days a week all year round. He's got something like 60k on it and he reckons it hasn't even popped a bulb. It's still on it's original battery. All it's had is consumables - tyres and chains etc - it's been serviced properly though.

We used to look after a couriers Pan Euro (not ex-police), the mileage got to soemthing like 180k before the wiring started to rot, so that was it finished- we'd replaced the swingarm a few miles before though, and that was a biggish job. I think when you get to astronomical mileages, how you've treated the bike is ever more important. Police bikes have service schedule times of,say, 9 hours where the manufacturers schedule suggests 2 or 3, so they aren't likely to break down on the way to a job.

Our Courier customer then bought a new Triumph Tiger next and ran up 40k or so before he gave up the job. Amazingly, the only real problem he had with that was that the side stand kept snapping - whether there was a fault or whether it was because of the weight that was in the panniers I can't say.

Enough with the generalizations here...I believe the OP was asking for a specific bike not a company/brand.

So to bring this back to topic, the Classic K series has been considered quite a sturdy bike, BUT it does have a couple issues...no different than any other bike.
BMW K75 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
BMW K100 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


When you buy a bike(new or used), you're choosing which issues you care to deal with. If you don't think you'll have issues...well that's another topic.

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edde
93 BMW K75s
www.motoedde.com

So the question was asked by me first, and I got the best answer just few days ago when I met Hank from US here in Chile:







His 1995 R1100GS has seen 707 000 km of road, dirtroad and offroad.

What's the most amazing about it all is that the engine is ALL stock: bores, pistons, rings, big end bearings and the whole valvetrain! The only things replaced on the engine are the two plastic camchain directors. Compression is still good and oil consumption within limits.

Elsewhere it's one set of gearbox bearings and he's on 4th final drive main bearing, if I'm not mistaken (giving the average for the bearing over 175 000km per bearing (how many chain set it would be?)). Last one he replaced in Colombia, in a hotel room - it's doable everywhere if you carry a spare unlike many (speculating-) people who think you're on the road once it goes. God knows how much consumables: tankfulls, tyres, filters, sparkplugs, clutch plates etc.

I've never seen such a mileage on any dualsport purpose bike. I've seen one Africa Twin, which is considered one of the most reliable from the japanese dual-sport trail bikes, close to 300 000km, but it was about to have complete engine overhaul because there wasn't much compression left and valvetrain was completely worn. I've heard about similar milage on Honda GoldWing, but that's a tarmac-only tourer and never sees the abuse like many of well-travelled GSes see (i.e. Hank came just through Bolivias worst parts-offroad).

Anyways, my 1998 R1100GS with just 109 000km looks like run-in baby compared to Hank's R1100GS with 7 times of this mileage!

Ride safe, Margus

Helge Pedersen did 380 kkms on his BMW R80 and
Claus Possi has done 300 kkms on his BMW R80 GS HPN

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"where the traveller goes, nobody knows ! "

I would have thought that careful maintenance and good oils meant that most engines can go the distance. Ride what you have within it what it was designed for....

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Cheers.
Ross Moorhouse.

Ride reports from my trip to Vietnam....

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...eam-real-49945

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...eam-real-49945

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...-vietnam-49956