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Originally Posted by R3dFox
the bike I buy should also be able to manage a trip to Asia or Central America, have at least 650cc, spoke tires, a big tank and be rack-compatible
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Unless you want to buy aftermarket rims, you don't have very many choices for spoked and tubeless (minimizing the repair efforts) - pretty much down to a Suzuki V-Strom 650XT.
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and - most importable - be technically simple enough to be fixed be an Asian backyard mechanic.
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This is a false saving. If you really want your bike to be fixable anywhere, buy a bike locally - sell it at the end of a leg - and buy another one when you fly to the next leg.
Example: in Vietnam, a lot of the Westerner-focused moto rental agencies will offer a Honda XR150L. It is a truly excellent bike for the country - light, reliable, great on bad surfaces, enough power to carry you and your luggage at a little bit over the normal traffic speed in the country. BUT it's a grey import from Thailand - at 3000 euros new, it's too expensive to be competitive in the local market - so the caveat from the rental agencies is that the ubiquitous village mechanic won't have the parts or the familiarity to fix it.
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All the bikes that one can buy today are stuffed with loads of technical bullshit. From heatings over cruise control to ride-by-wire and so on. I never had that stuff and I'm pretty sure I don't need it.
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Nor do you need fuel injection, ABS, disk brakes, electric start, or a headlight that actually illuminates things.
People ride modern bikes RTW all the time. Sometimes things break, and they're expensive to fix or slow to get parts in. Almost never do things break so that the bike is completely beyond repair (short of a collision or falling off a cliff).
The Estonian couple who went RTW on an old GSA has a bit in their book where they took apart the engine in South America somewhere to do a major service and replace some famously wonky crankshaft bearing or such, after 160,000 km on the engine - the rider was very worried about it. Turned out, the part was fine, and he could've easily finished the trip on that engine before it became remotely a problem.
A simple bike is a reasonable argument for a mechanically inclined rider to have the confidence of being able to repair it roadside.
If you're relying on local mechanics, buy a local bike.
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But what bike - that is not much more than just exactly that - can you buy today, which is reliable, ideally quite new and can be fixed by a mechanic instead of a mechatronic?
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I'd choose between a Honda CB500X with the Rally Raid kit (the Honda 500cc twin is pretty much a worldwide engine), or the Yamaha Tenere 700 (no active ride electronics, enough power, great on bad roads).
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