Dude ... I hear you. Not really disagreeing to any degree of note with anything you are saying. I liked your original post.

What I am saying (not to you but to the guy who used the word "bulletproof", and thought because he is 12 weeks into a 2 year trip that his bike is bulletproof) is that its naive to claim any bike is bulletproof.

My point is there is nothing even vaguely close to bulletproof. If any rider thinks he has found the silver bullet, then he is kidding himself. Thinking because he has a KLR that he is not going to have unfixable problems is also wishful thinking.

Reality is if a KLR has a shagged crank, or if a 1200 has a shagged ECU (not that I ever heard of a shagged ECU), either way, the likely outcome is FEDEXing in a spare part.

In 2009 while I was in Mongolia there were two other riders there at the time. Tiffany on her BMW airhead ... she was airfreighting in a new distributor rotor. And a DR350, which was running really badly and needed daily maintenance due to broken carb needle (ultimately it was running so badly it was rail freighted back to Moscow)

All the time I see these old bikes being unfixable in remote place, and needing airfreighted parts to get them going again. Yes, sometimes I see more modern bikes needing new parts flown in too. The only difference is that the older bikes break down much more frequently. MUCH MUCH more frequently.

I remember being in touch with a nice Aussie couple planning a ride in 2006 across Russia (London to Tokyo), they chose to take old bikes, on the premise that they were more reliable, more fixable etc ... Guess how that trip ended. Those reliable old repairable bikes broken and freighted out ...

Again its one of a hundred examples I could dig up.

The outcomes dont match the dogma that people have when they choose old bikes - convinced it will make their trips more worry free.

If you like old bikes, then fine, ride old bikes. If you like them for their character, then fine. Say you choose the bikes cause you like their character. If youre Doug, and your whole thing is based around cool old bikes, then do what he does and say its cause I love these cool old bikes. If you love KLRs, just admit its cause you love the heavy old primitive beast that is a KLR. Just dont kid yourself that they are more reliable, or less likely to cause you grief. Its just not reality.

And... Definitely don't kid yourself that your choice, whatever it is, is bulletproof. That just total naivity.

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