The Triumph is a piece of cake to work on and pretty bullet proof (although the silencers would give an XT one a run for it's money in a rusting race). In 4 years I've had one breakdown, a rubbed through cable under the tank. Took about three hours to find and three minutes to fix! One advantage of the Scrambler or DR over the Bonneville Black is not having to take the silencers off to change a tyre. That said, I can change a rear flat in about 20 minutes, so I'm happy. The Bonnevilles have 6000 mile service intervals which is useful.

Is the DR watercooled? After my experience with the BMW F650 in the desert I'll be staying aircooled until they ban them!

In terms of performance, it's very similar to an R80GS (I borrowed on for a week to kill that hankering). Both the R80 and Triumph in my experience are superior to the XT600E (I had that for just over a year) on the road or two up. I never tried a DR, but suspect all trail style bikes have some road issues. Off road, I'm sure the XT (or DR) would be superior eventually, but in terms of getting places I always made it through in a time I was happy with on all three bikes.

I went for the Triumph over getting an R80GS of my own for the simple reason I wouldn't pay £3000 for a twenty year old 50,000 mile bike when I could get one at zero miles for £5000 (and a ****ed salesman made an insane offer on the XT). The BM's service intervals were a factor and as an en ex-Ural owner I was (probably unjustly) put off by carb balancing and push rod adjustment, I prefer my Japanese style shims (which you never touch) and carb block (ditto). I was selling the XT due to the pillion seat and motorway/high wind performance with the experience that something more road styled will get everywhere I wanted to go so long as the right tyres fit.

Andy