max671

I'm just wondering roughly what the lifespans of sport bikes usually are. Like with cars, you get a Toyota or a Honda you expect it to drive for 200,000+ miles, with a GM anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000+ miles, get a Ford and you're lucky if it gets off the lot. So with a bike, what are some rough guesstimates of what I could expect? It looks like I'll be getting a '99-'01, and the average for those years seems to be around 20,000-25,000 miles, is that excessive, not that much? Will a sport bike last up to like 50,000 miles or is that expecting a little too much? Thanks for the input.
Also, one other question. Okay, I'm 6'2", and I used to ride a '97 ZX-6R. Thing was, that bike was pretty small, so my stance on it wasn't really all that comfortable, like after about 45 minutes of riding my arms were pretty much completely numb from holding myself up. Then I tried riding I think a '99 or '00 R1, and the stance was pretty much perfect (huge difference). Anyway, I know with most newer bikes the dimensions are exactly the same between the 600's and the liter bikes, I was wondering when did that start happening (what year?) Cause the thing is I don't really want a liter bike cause that's just more power than I need/want/can use, but the 600's aren't very comfortable. I'm just asking so I have a better idea of what bikes to look at. So yeah, that's all. Thanks for the help, sorry for the super-long post.

VanillaThrilla

If you maintain it, it will last longer than you! You're more likely to sell it or wreck it before riding it into the ground.

skr00zloose

it all comes down to maintenance and how the bike is treated. i've seen plenty of bikes approaching 100,000 miles.

pound for pound a sportbike motor is waaaaay higher strung than damn near any car, so they're not going to last as long before they need freshened up. 25,000 miles isn't that bad if it was taken care of correctly. sadly, most people don't keep up on thier maintenance, and beat the crap out of thier bikes. hell, most sportbikes are layed down at LEAST once before they ever even need a valve adjustment.

max671

^^ That's what I figured, since they run at such high rpms all the time they would age a lot more quickly.

xshanex

50k miles shouldn't be too hard. I've seen a lot of bikes that are maintained well and make it up to 75k and still going.....there's people with way over that as well. A bike probably won't be like most cars where you can do 100k miles with only changing the oil...you might have to do some small stuff here and there. If you take your time it still shouldn't be too hard find a bike of those years with lower mileage than 25k to start off with.

ergos...all depends on the bike and how they fit you. They feel different from year to year so you'd have to sit on a ton of bikes. Might want to look at the fz1 vs r1 or fz6 vs r6 and so on if comfort is really important to you. Maybe check out the vfr's or some other sport touring bikes. You can get bar risers and peg lowering brackets for a lot of bikes which would help out a lot.

djgrom

I think you are more likely to have transmission problems before your engine blows up.