Longevity and reliability, motorcycle vs. cage

[Toyuzu]

Since the vast majority of "cages" tend to accumulate far more miles than the average motorcycle, this view may seem a little skewed, but here is my observation.

I have been riding motorcycles for about 15 years, and I've owned 8 of them, all Japanese makes. Since moving to Alaska, for obvious reasons I don't ride nearly as much as I used to in California. But I have well over 100K miles on two wheels. It seems to me that all of my cages have problems I have to fix fairly frequently. I have almost never had maintenance issues with my motorcycles though. There is always standard preventative maintenance like oil changes, chain maintenence for those models with chains, etc. But I have never, ever had a major maintenance issue with any of my motorcycles. EVER.

My current ride is a 1981 honda CX 500 Custom that I picked up from the original owner in Anchorage a little over 2 years ago. He had only managed to put 5900 miles on it in all those years. Anyone who has been a mechanic knows that lack of use can be even more damaging to a machine than over use. Seals get brittle, condensation causes rust and corrosion where we can't see it, and things tend to fall apart quickly when the machine gets used again.

Not so with my CX. It sat unused in my un-heat garage, subjected to temperatures of 30 below for a year while I was in Afghanistan. I came home, charged the battery, fixed a stuck float bowl in the carb by tapping the carb body with a dead-blow hammer and it has since given me 5000 miles trouble-free. It get's 45-50 MPG, has plenty of power, it's comfortable enough to ride all day and never shows any sign of any kind of maintenance issue.

On the other hand, my wife's 7 passenger SUV is down for the count. (Needs over $600 worth of parts - I do the labor myself) and my truck has a check-engine light, after having received twice what I paid for my CX in repairs over the last two years.

I just spent half a day fixing my brother-in-law's Dodge minivan a couple of weeks ago, and another friend with a Ford Ranger with less than 30 K miles just asked me to help him figure out why it has no power.

It seems to me that motorcycles in general are built to a higher standard, or at least they used to be. I've never owned one newer than 1984.

What are your thoughts?

[BuzZz]

I've never understood the prevailing attitude that many people have about bikes and mileage. It seems that once a bike gets 20-30k miles on it, a large percentage of folks think it's worn out. I don't know why, though. Poor maintenance and lack of attention to cables, lubing bearings, dry-rotted wiring and such things has probably condemned more basically sound bikes than anything IMHO. Keep it out of the weather, and properly maintained, and most bikes will last 3-4 times that 20-30k barrier.

Some say that since a bike engine spins faster than a typical car or truck motor, it wears out faster. I don't necessarily buy that. Bikes are designed to spin at those RPM's and have far less rotating mass stressing them. If you ride in the top 1/3 of the RPM range 90% of the time, it might wear out faster, but in real life, you don't. You ride in the lower-to-middle range most of the time. If you spin the engine in your cage that fast, you'll wear it out just as fast.....

Cages also have many more mechanical/electrical parts and systems to wear out. Balljoints, tie-rods, shocks (all built to a much lower standard than most bike parts) wear out quickly, all these newer electronic 'driving aids' like abs, traction control, sat-nav, cameras, and the like are just problems waiting to happen. Computers and circuit boards like to fail at the slightest provocation.

All that goes double if the cage was built in North America. The pisspoor quality we seem to accept from the Big 3 is what blows my mind. If bikes were built to that low standard, they would be trashed at 20k miles. But people get all patriotic (or brand-blind) and will accept having to replace the front end, brakes, belts, hoses, electrical components etc... over and over while saying how reliable the machine is.

I could rant about this all day, so I'll call it quits here. But I don't buy into the low mileage expectations so many people have for motorcycles. 100k on a bike is not abnormal if it is properly maintained.

[Toyuzu]

My thoughts exactly Buzz. Now I just need to find a fleet of motorcycles suitable for my whole family.

[Wrider]

I agree with that. I recently did a tire and oil change on a CBR1100XX Super Blackbird with over 120K on it. Still was in good condition and rode like a champ because the owner had kept up with maintenance. Said the only thing that had failed on him was the cam chain tensioner and that's notorious on that model (or any Honda for that matter lol).
On the other hand if everything goes right today I'm picking up an 01 Dakota with 83K on it because my Camry is trying to spin a rod bearing at 170K, even though it's been properly maintained since at least 50K miles.

[BuzZz]

Anything mechanical can fail, no matter how well designed or built (keeps us in business Dude ). The better it is designed and built, the less chance of that, but.....

[Gunslinger]

I would disagree Toyuzu. My take on it is that I don't really know if bikes are built to a higher standard, but I don't think so. Like BuzZz says there are just so many more parts and components that can/will go bad on a car. Lots of high mileage cars still on the road with little done to them other than routine maintenance. Regarding the Big 3, I think the quality is better now than it has ever been. Having a car go 100K miles was unheard of 50 years ago. Now you can expect to get upwards of 200K, sometimes more. It's all about keeping up on the maintenance and driving it like you actually give a damn about your ride. That goes for bikes too. It would be interesting if you could somehow figure out how many bikes out there have 80-100K or more miles on them. I bet the percentage would be pretty low, maybe 5%?

[paul246]

I agree with that. I recently did a tire and oil change on a CBR1100XX Super Blackbird with over 120K on it. Still was in good condition and rode like a champ because the owner had kept up with maintenance. Said the only thing that had failed on him was the cam chain tensioner and that's notorious on that model (or any Honda for that matter lol).
On the other hand if everything goes right today I'm picking up an 01 Dakota with 83K on it because my Camry is trying to spin a rod bearing at 170K, even though it's been properly maintained since at least 50K miles.

Is the rod bearing just knocking on a cold start? If so, you may get away with just replacing the bearing and saving the crank.

[Wrider]

I agree with that. I recently did a tire and oil change on a CBR1100XX Super Blackbird with over 120K on it. Still was in good condition and rode like a champ because the owner had kept up with maintenance. Said the only thing that had failed on him was the cam chain tensioner and that's notorious on that model (or any Honda for that matter lol).
On the other hand if everything goes right today I'm picking up an 01 Dakota with 83K on it because my Camry is trying to spin a rod bearing at 170K, even though it's been properly maintained since at least 50K miles.

Is the rod bearing just knocking on a cold start? If so, you may get away with just replacing the bearing and saving the crank.

No unfortunately not. It's barely perceptible at idle, but you can hear it with a mechanic's stethoscope. Once you start hitting the gas you can hear it (almost sounds like valve noise) but varies depending on throttle input.

[RhadamYgg]

I agree with that. I recently did a tire and oil change on a CBR1100XX Super Blackbird with over 120K on it. Still was in good condition and rode like a champ because the owner had kept up with maintenance. Said the only thing that had failed on him was the cam chain tensioner and that's notorious on that model (or any Honda for that matter lol).
On the other hand if everything goes right today I'm picking up an 01 Dakota with 83K on it because my Camry is trying to spin a rod bearing at 170K, even though it's been properly maintained since at least 50K miles.

Man, I so love the Blackbird... Almost bought one when I got the B-King. Probably biggest goof up I have made. Oh, yeah, I didn't have the cash because my wife used it on credit card debt instead of holding it for me to buy a bike and use the proceeds of my old bike on credit card debt. Damn. Really pissed me off.

[RhadamYgg]

Well the Honda's I've owned (cars) we haven't sold until they have 200,000+ miles on them. We do standard maintenance, and sometimes a lot worse. The only mechanical problem that stranded us was a distributor on 160,000 mile 1992 Honda Civic.

Non-warranty/hidden warranty - Honda replaced the transmission on my 2001 Honda Accord. I won't consider that a mechanical issue because apparently it is a design problem and all the Accords of my cars generation had tranny problems.

Still, though my sister-in-law had a 1991 Shadow (car Dodge/Chrysler) and she had transmission problems - and they had to replace the transmission several (more than 3) times in order to fix the problem! Covered by warranty for the first 3, 4th was on her dollar - warranty completed.