Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Douglas
I don't think I'd want to do the valve clearances on THAT. Sure it's a better bike than my XR400, but I can do the valve clearances and oil change in about half an hour.
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I'm sure it's superior in every way to my old XR650L (which they had along as "support bikes", by the way). Problem is, I'm not superior to my XR650L. As a matter of fact, I'm markedly inferior to it, and can prove that at will.
There are certainly guys who can use the performance on offer with a bike like this. I can't. Not many of my riding buddies, if they were honest with themselves, could either. We've seen the same trend in street bikes, with 600 and 1000cc sport bikes having vastly surpassed anyone but a professional racer's skills several bike generations ago.
Yet they keep selling, for whatever reason. The price is not only the initial sticker, but the onerous maintenance schedules and requirements. I mean, really - where the hell
are the valves on this thing? My God, the hardest part of adjusting them on my XR650L is stretching it long enough to actually finish a beer.