If you use Margus' link and look up the manufacturer's recalls , you will see that several thousand BMW s have been recalled for manufacturing faults and not a single VStrom .
Unless the facts are wrong !

Living by the Alaska Highway , I see hundreds of bikes during the summer .The most popular bike is the KLR with very many VStroms and GS1150 and GS 1200 , not so many GS650 .

If you were to avoid a certain bike just because of an opinion formed by reading this thread , you would indeed be a fool .

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Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

Regards various faults on various bikes:

The best I can suggest is to get involved in the popular bike specific forums. This is the best way to learn what is going on with a particular bike from owners. Follow some of the links I posted before.

Every time I point out a BMW failure Margus calls me a liar. Read the posts on the BMW sites and decide for yourself.
Now pick some other bikes. How do they match up?

Try BMWMOA site, and BMW RA. There are many other BMW boards as well, all staunchly pro BMW.

I've read the Vstrom boards since 2002 and can assure everyone that from this feedback and personal experience (60,000 miles 2 Vstroms) Vstroms have no endemic, repeating failures based on bad design. I can also assure everyone that the Vstrom was viewed with great suspicion by many new owners, given it's a whole new bike. So it had to be very good indeed to convince the skeptics. But after a few years it became clear the bike was basically very good.

Sure, there have been a few troubled Vstrom owners as there are with most any bike. But Margus's portrayal of "blown" clutches is total BS and he knows it.

The Clutch baskets on about 30% of '02 and '03 DL1000's got noisy. On the first Vstrom Yahoo List-serve we only had 2,700 members in 2003 and NOT ONE clutch basket ever left a rider on the side of the road. They were noisy and irritating, but the bike still rode fine and the clutch operated totally normally other than the sound and feel. I know, I had one and Suzuki replaced the basket .... free!

Suzuki took about 6 months to respond to this but by '04 the design was changed and anyone with a noisy clutch could have it fixed free. Many were
replaced ... free.... out of warranty. So in the end Suzuki did the right thing.

My Vstrom's have been the most reliable bikes I've owned. Period. I've owned about 45 bikes and tested many others for City Bike. Mostly Japanese bikes, starting in 1960. I've also owned Bultaco, Triumph, BSA, Norton, Husqvarna, Laverda and TWO BMW's ... and probably some I've forgotten.

Sure, guys complain about stuff on the Vstrom too but mostly the reports about long term reliability are very very good. Thousands and thousands of posts reflect this. Mostly what you hear are complaints about wind buffeting, tires, and what farkles to buy!

Search for Vstrom or Wee Strom .... and take your pick, lots of threads.
Beasts - ADVrider

or go to this Vstrom specific site.
V-Strom Forum - powered by Tex Arts

Post and ask about problems, breakdowns, blown clutches. The responses should shed some light on the truth here. There are some problems, but after 8 years of production mostly the record is Good!

Some BMW zealots are in denial and so are BMW corporate, but the truth is catching up to them. If anyone does a few simple searches the facts are all there ..... in spades.

The pics above are just me having a bit of fun. I could find pics of any bike on the ground, but since the GS guys are so brave and ride in such dumb places, it's hard to resist
(remember, in my local riding club we have at least 10 GS owners, although many have bailed on BMW. Some are buying the new F800GS, some have changed to Orange underpants, some even have bought Vstroms!


Patrick

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

Still beating your old drum looking for isolated incidents or examples (that, in fact ARE "village gossips" if you try to prove someting in terms of statistics and overall picture). Or are you senile or just ignorant person? Please read all of my posting over again.

WOW! Look who's defensive now, with carefully selected long sentences to prove everything otherwise very wisely. Respect! Can't believe mr. BMW-basher himself (or should we call you now mr. Boss-BMW-basher/hater in HU? - That is, while supposed to be an unbiased motorcycle magazine writer at the same time?) gets rather touchy about V-Strom and suddenly gets so defensive if hears some bashing in return.

Proves the point - your Ein-Stonian maybe provoked it intensonally - just to show yourself from the mirror. Since there basically is no other way to stop your (rather schizophrenic) bashing with mis-quoting or just ignoring what others have to say. And I can easily contiue bashing V-Strom with different examples if I may? I kind of started to like bashing bikes I never owned myself, it's soo much easier to be in the basher-role. OR maybe I've just picked up some of your habits?

(If you still didn't get my point, then please read the previous posts all over again.)

Why isn't such a silly issue (as you say: 30% of the bikes suffering noise issue, that's 1/3 o the bikes!!!, the rest not) in the recall list if Suzuki replaced it for free? Should be in the recall list in my book at least.

You're maybe blessed in the US if Suzuki responded your problem "secretly" (not puting it into the recall list), but in this part of the World Suzuki does nothing with it's silly reliability problems, like I had with my electrics and I know many others suffered the same problem. Problems were simply unanswered - in the end, the big $$$ had to come from my wallet to repair the broken bike, completely replaced wires due to faulty and unlogical electrical design.

So have been my BMWs, and in fact more reliable than my Japanese bike have been to me. Period. I'm maybe an isolated example and I can't tell if BMW is more reliable or not (and I wouldn't publically spread village gossip about Japanese bikes being unrelaible compared to my BMWs), but they have proven to be more reliable to me.

And arguing based our personal experiences will go into "I have better than you" competition and means nothing in terms of overall picture.

Look around UKGSer.com or ADVrider.com GSpot or BMW MOA, so are most of reports on BMWs good and owners mostly praise their bikes.

But if someone has good experiences with BMW, it doesn't count for you, right? Good experiences only with Suzuki count for you to compile overall picture, and only bad examples on BMWs?


Those few simple searches reveal THOUSANDS of faults on Japanese bikes and there are loads of them since Japanese bikes are the most produced bikes in the World in fact. Just type different combinations of "Suzuki problem" for a start


Maybe because BMW riders have sense of enthusiasm, exitment and adventure? At least I very much enjoy riding my trusty GS on very technical terrain and test it's strenght and reliability, and so do many many others:


Suzukis, especially V-Stroms seem to fall over even on the level ground:




Centre of gravity too high to handle? Too much vunerable plastics to break? Not really an offroad capable bike?


Funny, why so many ex V-Strom owners buy your unreliable R1200GSes then? Look into ADVrider for proof in different threads. The GS is more capable bike?

Good roads, Margus

You would indeed.

Pretty much sums up the whole thread for those who're not involved in the discussions.


Happy travels, Margus

Sure, with the right riders you can make almost any bike go anywhere, and do almost anything with it. Doesnt mean your Joe Average can do it (or would much more likely stay healthy doing with some other bike).

Neither the 1200GS or Vstrom 650/1000 are very offroad-capable, in fact quite the opposite, theyre heavy pigs, and only very experienced riders can manage them in conditions pictured. The Vstrom doesnt crash very well, at least it´ll break a lot of plastic, and I dont think a boxer-engine will get away lightly, either. Its even got the fuel injection parts exposed there on the backside of the cylinders.

Dont fully understand, how this relates to their technical reliability, though? I think both can be damaged in a way that they need to be taken somewhere by a pick-up quite easily.