I think there's a huge difference in quality between my two motorcycles that I'm having a hard time putting my finger on. I wonder how much of it is "nature" and how much is "nurture".
I got over the last big flub on my '92 GS500 and got it running day before yesterday, took it for a test ride yesterday. It was back to its old tricks, meaning I will have to pull the carbs off again which is just a frustrating job so I avoid it. I'm sure I can get that sorted as long as I get over my mental block against doing the work. It just is so much harder than it has to be due mostly to the fuel line/petcock routing and the airbox dimensions.
So while it ran pretty OK besides not idling properly on my test ride, once I got it home a new, old issue popped back up. The starter. There's a short between the bars on the commutator, it's done this before. I think due to simple age, whatever insulation was once there between the commutator bars has degraded or disappeared in spots and now as the brushes and commutator wear a fine dust of carbon and copper finds its way between some of the commutator bars and causes the starter to short in some positions. I've fixed this before by cleaning the commutator but I think this time it's going to take a new starter.
And that's the thing. With my old GS500, it seems like no matter how many things I fix, something new breaks. I just can't get over the hump. If this was a 50 year old bike with 80K miles on it that had been stored outdoors for two decades to rot then I would understand. But it's not! Sure, it's nearly 30 years old but it only has 24K on it and less than 3K since a top end rebuild. No signs of ever being neglected like rust or rotting parts anywhere. It's been garaged its whole life, obviously, and certainly in the years I've owned it. And I have sifted through the thing either fixing everything broken or worn I find or in many cases upgrading to a more reliable part. But this is supposed to be a reliable Japanese motorcycle, like the Honda Civic of motorcycles.
On the other hand, my 2012 Triumph Bonneville has almost 14K miles on it, 8K or so of which I have put on it myself. But it is basically in nearly mint, brand new condition, even after I wrecked it and had to rebuild a big part of it. But it doesn't have any signs of early degradation of anything. I think the thing will probably go at least 50K before it needs any serious service, maybe twice that!
Maybe it's three decades of "cheap bike" ownership policy... when stuff breaks, the cheapest fix is applied. Or maybe it's "cheap bike" manufacturing policy... when it was built, the cheapest parts were used. Maybe the Triumph is just better not only because it's made of higher quality parts, higher quality design, but also because in its shorter lifetime it was treated better by its owner.
It's mystifying since my old Suzuki was completely designed and manufactured in Japan by a mature motorcycle company with a long history of making durable, high quality products. My Triumph was designed in England by a young reborn company whose heritage was not one of reliable or durable stuff, and then manufactured in Thailand. We're supposed to think building a motorcycle in Thailand makes it substandard to those made in Japan, or designing them in England makes them quirky love/hate bikes while the Japanese in the 90s were known for designing exacting, conservative, and reliable stuff. But this is not true.
I feel like at 24K miles and 29 years of age every single part on my Suzuki that I have not replaced in the past five years is at the end of its service life. That's just a sad commentary on the quality of this thing. The starter in a Suzuki should last longer than 24K miles. It should last 4x that long. The carbs should not require you pull them and clean them thoroughly twice a year in order to keep it running. This bike is not nearly cool enough to be a hobby. It's supposed to be a reliable backup to my temperamental British bike. It's not working out that way.
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