Well, I got a '84 XT600 here in the UK a little while ago, I paid £650, it's recently been rebored, serviced, painted and modernised here and there. 45,000km. It's a nice bike. It has a "chuckle" in 2nd gear.. not sure if that's worth worrying about. I'm still trying to get my licence, so I've only been down the road on the bike, but, :rolleyes2: .. wow.. this thing is quick.. more so than the honda 125 with 11 very sickly horses.. if heman had a motorbike.. and you are high up, it's wonderful.. and the suspension seems much better, the ride is soft, I remember having a sore spine(!) after a day coming down from the hills on the 125. But, it seems it's not too heavy to throw about the mud still. A good choice I think. Also I heard from someone else that these types of bike are cheaper on the continent, they where more popular there than in the uk it seems.

Xr250 economy.
 

When i was recently in north Thailand i hired out a couple of xr250's on two separate occasions (different bikes). These were both used for wek-long tours of the mountain roads around Chiang Mai/Mae Hong Son/Golden Triangle etc. Also indulged in a few spots of off-roading up jeep tracks (and some pure singletrack through the jungle). I'm a bit anal about fuel economy and found the bikes would give about 60mpg (a geared-down '97 xr with knobblies, a lot of off-road), and 84mpg (standard '06 xr with more road-biased tyres, a bit of off-road and a fair amount of road cruising). I'm 5'11" and 85kg and the bikes would happily cruise at 55-60mph (fine for quiet Thai backroads - not sure about Euro main-roads, mind!), with light luggage on-board. Nice bikes, but they need regular oil-changes (enduro bikes, of course...), at least every 3000km's, according to the guys there.