Testing an idea about wear and tear when buying a bike

Mauser and I have a discussion going on inappropriately in another thread and Focker asked it be moved here.

Here is an XR6550R with a wear pattern that to me resembles the OP's bike before his very impressive build. ( http://www.xr650rforum.com/t1450p25-my-xrr-or-all-i-want-for-christmas-is-a-bionic-leg#9195 ) Ignore that this bike is in process of complete teardown. Post your educated guesses as to what this bike has in terms of use and I will tell the story of it's use after everyone who wants to chime in does so. The bike is sitting in my garage so I know it's history. No fair for Marcin to play as he knows it already from my Facebook page.







Cheers,

Looks like it has a done a few 1000k through dry dusty tracks ?.

I do not think you can tell mileage by missing paint on the side cases. One of my riding buddies rides twice as much as I do and his feet do not rub on the cases. I wear the paint off in a couple of rides.

And by posting the query I'm certainly giving away the game. But I think the amount of hard miles on the bike above is impressive but it looks the same as the low mile example in the link and other thread.

mamacone wrote:I do not think you can tell mileage by missing paint on the side cases. One of my riding buddies rides twice as much as I do and his feet do not rub on the cases. I wear the paint off in a couple of rides.

i do most rides (street) with my nikes on so in that case the paint will stay much longer then wearing crossboots but i polished the side case so no wear to see anymore on mine.

baught it like this:

Silly question...why does the paint wear off all over the right cover ?...never understand why as your boot sits on the rear brake pedal ?.

if you cross and jump you will automaticly set youre foot the best possible straight to the frame, i once jumped big time on my cr with only my toes on the peg and after the landing i could see inside my knee

mamacone wrote:I do not think you can tell mileage by missing paint on the side cases. One of my riding buddies rides twice as much as I do and his feet do not rub on the cases. I wear the paint off in a couple of rides.

+1

https://2img.net/h/i131.photobucket.com/albums/p303/big-daddy_photo/004.jpg
My odomiter shows 47.somthing miles [img][/img]

{cant finger out the pic thing right now}

That is a great test! Not sure I really want to know the answer! The bike that promted the test is mine. I took my brother to look at it with me, and we noticed the wear. We debated back and forth about the "real" milage on the bike. I though since it was ridden in California in the sand a lot, that the sand was maybe more abrasive and wore the cover early. The other thing we checked were all the fastners on the engine, which had little evidence of being worn (rounded bolt heads and such).....We are updating the clutch bushing and looking at the clutch, its in good shape, the friction plates are good dont look burned and little "grooving" on the clutch basket. (Of course we pulled a bone-head move and broke the clutch hub! Live and learn...)

But, hey I dont want to skew your test results, lay it on!

My guess is 6,000 miles of dirt riding on your bike.....

OK, here goes.
This bike is a 2003. Purchased in So Cal it lived in Baja for five years prerunning most of the SCORE events (Whoop 250, the 500, and 1000) every year. It raced somel of those SCORE events as well. Then the bike came back here in about '07-'08 landing back into Nor Cal.
Then it went on various rides including its last - a ride to Idaho on street, then a lap around Idaho all dirt. Near the end of the Idaho lap this bike and several others were left in the wilderness for a few nights while the riders went on a long hike. Somehow food or something had leaked on the bike. A bear came along and flipped the bike over and generally mauled it trying to find the food. Hikers came back and uprighted the bike and got it passable to ride. Off they went. Soon there was a ticking sound, then a knocking sound, then they stopped to diagnose. Turns out that the bear had left the bike on the side down that has the oil line and vent from the frame. All the oil that could drain out did because there is no check valve. So the engine was run low on oil. The bike was towed out, a u-haul trailer was rented and it was towed back to Nor Cal. The owner wanted to fix it but he has 25 bikes and isn't sentimental about this one. Soon parts began to be asked for and soon $4,000 worth of parts were sold off leaving the bike as you see it now. PO still wanted to rebuild it but never got around to it. I traded a case of beer for what is left; a plated XR650R frame with engine and several other things but missing alot too. My plan was to rebuild the engine but with clean low mileage XR650Rs going here for $1500 and less the time and money to rebuild the engine doesn't make sense. My plan now is to sell the hurt engine (just saw a friend sell one for $750) and buy a complete bike low mileage and excellent condition and swap engines, take all the best parts I need and sell off the rest.

So as you can now see this bike has been hammered and abused and has prerun and raced and been on long street rides and even longer dirt rides and been mauled by a bear and yet the cases look about like the low mileage one from Texas. So when you are looking for a bike please do not have "faith" that the rubbing you see on the frame or the cases means much. There are alot of good ways to determine a bike's usage but this rubbing stuff ain't among them.

I hope this helps!

IMHO, checking the fasteners is a great test because no one changes bolts. However, XR650Rs may not be a great test for that because the bike is so bombproof that it's rarely taken apart very far.

I saw a neat tool at Costco last week that was a tiny camera you insert through the plug hole to view the cylinder and valves. So I think a compression tester and a leak down tester would be great. Plus I'd look around at the guys other stuff and I'd see what sort of filters he uses. If he doesn't use Honda air filters then you are gonna need valves. I'd also look at controls and cabling.

My only suggestion about bikes from the dunes people is that my experience riding with the Dunes people is that the bikes are flat out nearly all the time. That isn't a problem for the big XRR IMHO but I would take apart all the bearings and go through that stuff. Particularly the swingarm bearings. Plus, if he didn't use the Honda OEM air filter then you will have chipped intake valves almost certainly.

Cheers.

DoctorXRR wrote:That is a great test! Not sure I really want to know the answer! The bike that promted the test is mine. I took my brother to look at it with me, and we noticed the wear. We debated back and forth about the "real" milage on the bike. I though since it was ridden in California in the sand a lot, that the sand was maybe more abrasive and wore the cover early. The other thing we checked were all the fastners on the engine, which had little evidence of being worn (rounded bolt heads and such).....We are updating the clutch bushing and looking at the clutch, its in good shape, the friction plates are good dont look burned and little "grooving" on the clutch basket. (Of course we pulled a bone-head move and broke the clutch hub! Live and learn...)

But, hey I dont want to skew your test results, lay it on!

My guess is 6,000 miles of dirt riding on your bike.....

Rub marks do tell you, the brother in-laws was MINT...guy rode it for like 40-50 miles and did not really like it. Mine had wear and talking with the owner he used it a lot. It's more of a combination of talking to the previous owner and looks. Yeah plastics can be changed but usually not with OEM ones. Also looking for dirt in spots that are just too hard to clean will let you know if the owner is truthful.


I have like 30,000 miles on mine all dirt *shrug* well 99% dirt

I have some ideas that I do when I am looking and will post them when I return. Am down near El Arco pitting for Bob Bell's 8X effort. This year is a real David vs. Goliath with us against corporate Honda and corporate KTM. But David has a very, very accurate sling shot! Riders are Robby Bell, David Pearson, Destry Abbot, and Steve Hengeveld.

Suffice to say I totally agree with your post about looking into places few people really ever clean.

Race starts Thursday morning at dawn. Team is Precision Concepts THR Kawi and you can get the quickest updates from Scotty Bloom's FB page at Breuaxman Live, https://www.facebook.com/BreauxmanLIVE?fref=ts . There's a guy making a documentary on us as well and he filmed us with the 8X bike in the back of our pickup from San Ysidro all the way to the hotel in Ensenada. If I get some good pictures and video I'll post a link.





Wish us well!