Funny, seems to me you pulled it out of your . I read the Kawasaki press release (the *ONLY* Kawasaki press release) and it does *NOT* say that the 2008 KLR-650 has an all-new engine. In fact, the only "new" things mentioned are a new piston, a new head, and a new ignition. It lists the other specs for the engine, but never states that any of those other things about the engine are any different from the current engine (for the record -- they aren't, Kawasaki changed as little as necessary to meet new emissions standards, and not one bit more).

My KLR currently has 34,000 miles (not KILOMETERS) on it, and actually burns LESS oil than it burned 15,000 miles ago (probably because I've been using better oil than the dipstick previous owner did, and changed it every 1500-2500 miles, and all this fresh oil has cleaned out the ring pack to make it work better). My current plans are to run it to 60,000 miles (100K kilometers) then part it out and get the new KLR. Given that Eldon Carl has 80K+ miles on his KLR's, that seems like a reasonable plan.

So yes, the KLR is a cheap disposable bike. But I know for a fact you can get at least 34,000 miles on the thing without any (*ANY*) engine problems (heck, it still had the OEM balancer chain adjuster in it when I changed it out at 22,000 miles, completely intact and functioning right), as long as you take care of the thing. If you don't change the oil every 2,000 miles, the engine *will* fail. But as long as you do that, the thing is bulletproof for the duration of its design life (which appears to be around 60,000 miles/100,000 kilometers), at least if you change out the sketchy balancer adjuster.

BTW, the reason there's so few high-mileage KLR's advertised for sale is because used low-mileage KLR's are so cheap, it doesn't make sense to try to sell a high-mileage KLR. The only thing that makes sense is to part the thing out. But we're out here, even if we part out our bikes rather than selling them. You are being a naughty boy to say we aren't.