Hey Folks,

I see a lot of people on here very knowledgeable about these bikes.

How many miles can you get out of a DR650 before it would start burning oil for example? I read where Lecap has said the KLR starts around 70k, although the bottom end, etc still seems very stout. Hopefully he will chime in since I see he runs those as well.

Thanks in advance.

I've read LeCap's feedback on his S. Africa DR/KLR rental fleet as well. Can't recall the figures he quoted exactly for the DR but I believe he prefers the DR's over the KLR's. I am fairly certain, from reports I've read about DR's over the last year and a half, that you're looking at around 60K to 70K miles on a DR650. (post '96)

This given reasonable care, fresh oil once in a while, filters clean, valves adjusted et al.

My bosses' daughter had a good running '96 DR 650 at 32,000 miles. Sadly, the Neutral sensor switch come loose and damaged the gear box. Its being repaired. No oil use to speak of. This bike was a former SuperMoto racer.

So if your neutral sending switch is loc-tited in place then there is not much else that typically fails. Some bottom ends have gone out, very rare. Some bikes develop leaky valve guide seals, but very uncommon.

Looking over on ADV DR thread and the Yahoo list, you just don't any serious failures at all. Problems are mostly to do with bikes sitting, carbs gummed up, and guys bodgeing up attempts at jetting/air box mods. Some run it lean for years and then wonder why its leaks oil or valve guides leak. But even when abused, the DR's mostly keep on truckin.

For my bike I'm hoping for 60,000 miles. At that point, if the bike needs a top end, so be it. It will have earned its stripes at that point. I can do this work
myself. Parts are pricey (all parts are pricey!) but not many need replacement
on this job. (Piston, rings, pin, seals, gaskets, Machine and re-rebuild head/valve seats, maybe new valves, valve guides for sure.

Patrick

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

Beddhist did a report about his DR reliability:

I'm sure Mollydog will soon be along and says it's all not normal and its all riders fault?

What year are these bikes? How many miles total? And what was the miles
on the bikes when Bedhist bought the two bikes? And what is the history of these bikes before Bedhist got hold of them? My guess is they were BOTH old boilers.

Pretty obvious Bedhist has no clue how to adjust a chain. And what chain is he running? And what sprockets? Cheap aftermarket crap makes a BIG difference here. No chain thrashing here or on my or any DR's I've ever heard about. Sounds like some newbie running a worn out and mis-adjusted chain.

We've had three DR650 test bikes, one in '96, another in '02 and yet another in '05. I have an '06, which I paid for with my own money. We still have the '96. I had the '05 tester for 6 months, we put 5000 very hard miles on this bike. Not one problem or any sign of wear. Lots of very tough dirt use, two sets of tires burned through by some very unforgiving staff who all had their way with that bike. It took it all with a smile.

Of the thousands of posts and ride reports I've read on DR650's, I've never heard of ANY of the complaints Bedhist has listed. Now why is that? I'm not saying they didn't happen...but I know why some happened (ignorance). Others, (worn out parts) still others... I have never heard of. And believe me, if this bike had serious repeat problems I'd be the first to tell the world about them and I would never own such a bike.

I"d like to know the service history of his bikes. Steering head bearings need to be maintained, greased and adjusted about every 20,000 miles. Any bets his were never touched? If the bike was ridden thousands of kms. on dirt roads without service, I could see the bearings giving up. Especially NON Suzuki bearings, ridden in the wet and the bike left outside. Wheelies, also kill head bearing. (BMW's can't really wheelie, so no problem there

Worn cam? Excuse me? Once again...lets hear the history of use of these bikes. Sounds to me like may have been run low on oil or oil was never changed or poor quality car oil was used.

Many BMW riders use car oil. You can't do that on a DR. Quality synthetic or semi syn. makes a big difference. Never heard, ever, of DR cams wearing this way.

Most likely the wear was normal and the mechanic was looking to make a few extra bucks. If this was common place it would be widely known by now...this model is NOT new. Been out since 1996. And by the way....

What year are Bedhist's bikes?

Won't run below 3000 rpm? Obviously, someone has screwed up the jetting, air box, the carb or all three and are too stupid to pull over and fix the problem. I'll bet its water in the float bowl or dirt...or both. These bikes are pretty simple to work on. Any average mechanic could sort out the carb issues in half an hour.

I'm sure some DR650's have some issues, especially ones that have led hard lives or sat outside for months or years or were bodged on by idiot mechanics
who can't even adjust a chain or clean a carb.
Any abused or neglected bike will have problems eventually.

You just can't argue with the experience of Le Cap and his rental fleet of DR's and KLR's used in Africa. This, to me, is the only legitimate and ultimate test. Rental equipment really takes a severe beating. You wanna argue with that Margus?

Far as I've heard, Le Cap's DR's have held up pretty well over a lot of hard miles. Maybe you should ask him ....again....to explain WHY he nearly went broke running BMW F650's? He had a long list of things that failed on a repeat basis. And not just on one bike....but on ALL of them BMV? nien, danke.

Patrick

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Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

Patrick
Can you tell all that from a post without seeing the bike or meeting the person?

You mentioned in August that you were ‘moving away from helping newbies on line’. If you can’t say something positive or, at least factually accurate, about a person you’ve never met, why bother at all?
Stephan

5000 km? That’s nothing! Every engine in the world should manage that!



Well, it seems like someone takes every opportunity to keep the myths alive. It makes me sad because I don’t want to make this to a bash-Suzuki-thing.

Sit back, put the volume on 11 and enjoy:
YouTube - BMW Motorcycles HP2 at Erzberg MC Rodeo 2006!




Just thinking… Maybe it’s temperature-related? A friend of mine (DR-Big) had to change the cam shaft every year, he also had to change something else (valve-related) but I can’t remember what). But he could live with that and liked the bike – for a few years. He sold the bike after the cam-chain broke in a Swedish rally.
Last year he bought a DR650 wreck (40kkm) and the camshaft was worn, but he bought it just to fix it and sell it.
Another friend (DR 650) wore out the cam at 30kkm, he also managed to get an engine full of rust the next winter (bike stored with fresh oil).

So both the DR and DRZ have a bad rumour up here and if you check the member list of a Norwegian offroad club (Medlemsliste - OTC (Offroad Touring Club) ) you will find:

Suzuki: 54
Honda: 205
KTM: 95
Yamaha: 94
BMW: 109
Kawazaki: 10

The total number of bikes is more then 600 and only 9% is Suzuki, isn’t that a bit odd? After all Suzuki is meant to be one of the big ones!
I think the mechanical problems play a part, maybe it’s because of our cold climate which reduces the oil flow.
But the DR-Big is a bit nice and funny to drive (if you like top-heavy vibrators :-)):

Yes, Stephano,
I can tell without seeing the bike! If Beddist description of the problems are correct, then its pretty easy to guess...at least on some of the problems like the chain. This is very basic stuff Stephano, as surely you know. Beddist is NOT a newbie or begginer....and not helping him....I am just questioning blatant inaccuracies regards the DR650....Why Bother? Who knows? Why do you bother mate?

Patrick

__________________
Patrick passed Dec 2018. RIP Patrick!

Knowing what the person is inside w/o seeing him/her... Telepathic abilities that reach as far as to the other side of the ocean?

You also seem to have this telepathic ability with motorcycles. Respect mate!

Because you base your arguments on gossip and turn them into myths and brainless bashing, while never having owned certain bikes yourself, while doing this will probably raise certan suspicion in other people concerning the reliability of the information coming out of your mouth?

I had a go on my mates DR 800 Big offroad. It's one of the few jap bikes I've tried that has a character in it. He has had multiple engine rebuilds and bike's reliability has been very questionable, altough his has gone over respectible 100K, but most of the bits in the engine are replaced, some multiple times. Damn, I too sound like I'm distributing gossips now...

Anyways, a very interesting bike it is to ride, top heavy, but with character in it - the biggest single ever that has been in production:

This is a thread about the Suzuki DR650 and perhaps Beddhist will contribute soon and give us an update on his current bike so that we can stay on topic and help the original poster, GNR650. Beddhist seemed very happy with his Suzuki (apart from the chain guard) when he was in the Middle East and it’s now taken him as far as Tibet where the Chinese are most likely blocking his Internet access as we type…


Patrick, my question to you was specific: why do you bother typing something factually inaccurate about a person you’ve never met (“Pretty obvious Bedhist has no clue how to adjust a chain”)? You can backtrack... ("Beddist is NOT a newbie or begginer") but I think it’s reasonable to wonder why you bothered in the first place. Let’s discuss bikes not people.


As for why I bother (posting); so that I meet people like Peter (Beddhist) - and you, Margus & AliBaba one day I hope. I believe we share a love of bikes, travel & adventure. Back to the bikes...
Stephan

Well 5000 miles is not much, but if that defines a test for you it’s nice to know. I got my first problem after 70.000 miles, broken alternator.


There is not one bike, but three. I don’t think it’s important for the cam if the bike is stored outside or not. I have stored my bike outside all year for 25 years and never had a camshaft-failure (nor timingchain-failure but I replace the chain every 100kkm)

An overlander bike should be able to be stored outside; we don’t all drive from hotel to hotel..

It would have been strange to not bring up known problems with the bike, I’ve never heard of another bike with this problem, but all bike have issues.


The internet would have been a nice place without foreigners from small countries, don’t you think? We only have 100.000 bikes, but Sweden next door has a few and Denmark has a few so it adds up.

We are not as many people as you but we have a lot off different bikes and it’s therefore easier to compare them and pick the best.

I have no problems with Suzuki, but if I was going to buy a single I would have looked at the new Yamaha…

HP2s are not boxers? This is something new for me, please enlighten us.

Re: wheelies. You present yourself as a really tough guy I see, you can wheelie anything and while you don't know about head bearings on telelever machines?

To wind up more gossip column in Mollydog's style: mate of mine wheelies his ancient old 1100 on every robot when he's in a good mood, he wheelies for miles long and he says it's a wheelie monster with bags of bottom-end torque, he has tried supermotos, sports etc, and his head bearing are still stock.

He has a skill to wheelie correctly, especially with the coming down part, no matter how heavy the bike is. Got the point?

I admit I'm biased, like you are, no-one doubts about it, we all are biased someway, but I base my facts on a proven ground and arguments when I present a fact, not on gossip and on people you've never even met in your life, you even haven't seen DR800Big yourself and you already speculate about its reliability. And you also mean with these arguments we can take all of yours as a pure ear-kissing gospel then, an absolute truth about DRs or any other bike's reliability you happen to talk about, including modern BMWs that you haven't even owned yourself and that you keep endlessly bashing them?

Very interesting role-model situation we have here... Others speak bollox, you know and speak the (unbiased) truth. Interesting!

About numbers you can see here, the biggest reliability survey ever done in the history of bikes: Clicky-clicky. According to you, the numbers don't lie, right?

Then why are you distributing it?