I thought as most people are looking for advice on what bike to take. It would also be useful if we look at bikes that should steer clear off. I dont know if this has been done before but here goes;

CCM 604e 1998 - This is by far the worst Bike I ever owned. When I bought it new I loved the power, the noise, the torque hell it even looked the dogs. Sadly it was all short lived the electrics were crap even the motor (Rotax) let me down.

I purchased the bike because I was proud to buy British and Fly the Flag. CCM even entered them in the Dakar.

My local dealer was a complete waste of time and fair play to the Factory they stopped dealing with that dealer after all my problems.

In the first 8 months of ownership the bike spent 5 months off the road being fixed.

The factory thought it was normal to blow rear light bulbs (12 in a fortnight just takes the piss)

After all my problems they did take the bike back and do some work on it. My dreams off a desert tour were just that because I no longer trusted the Bike. I did take the Bike over to Portugal it blew headlight bulbs alot. When I hit the Picos Europa in Spain (lovely place) it blew up and I had to trailer it to the Ferry and push the Bike back into the UK.

I learnt my lesson and lost a fair bit of money. Lucky for me my next bike was a Yamaha TTR 250 1994 what a difference its such a great bike and still going strong. So be aware go for something well known and perhaps a little tatty looking it will get the job done and keep you smilling. Plus by having a less expensive bike you got more cash so you can escape for longer.

Well, it's an off roader, isn't it?

__________________
HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

My KTM 950 was worse than that, bought new, it had a recall even before I got to ride it ! Head gasket went twice and I didn't even see it for 5 months while KTM Uk were attempting to sort it out. Clutch basket failed, broken piston rings, rusty spokes, constant flat battery (carb heater wired wrong), 800 miles per litre of oil.
Nighmare.
KTM ? never again.

[QUOTE=stuxtttr;156837]I thought as most people are looking for advice on what bike to take. It would also be useful if we look at bikes that should steer clear off. I dont know if this has been done before but here goes;

CCM 604e 1998 - This is by far the worst Bike I ever owned. When I bought it new I loved the power, the noise, the torque hell it even looked the dogs. Sadly it was all short lived the electrics were crap even the motor (Rotax) let me down.

I purchased the bike because I was proud to buy British and Fly the Flag. CCM even entered them in the Dakar.

My local dealer was a complete waste of time and fair play to the Factory they stopped dealing with that dealer after all my problems.

In the first 8 months of ownership the bike spent 5 months off the road being fixed.

The factory thought it was normal to blow rear light bulbs (12 in a fortnight just takes the piss)

After all my problems they did take the bike back and do some work on it. My dreams off a desert tour were just that because I no longer trusted the Bike. I did take the Bike over to Portugal it blew headlight bulbs alot. When I hit the Picos Europa in Spain (lovely place) it blew up and I had to trailer it to the Ferry and push the Bike back into the UK.



You've probably guessed by now that as soon as you say something's rubbish others will leap to its defence!

I'm also a 604 owner (2001 version) - for the last two years- and my experience has been exactly the opposite. Total mechanical problems has been to adjust the carb float height messed up by a previous owner. Other than that its just been service items - oil, filters and a few tyres. I don't know why yours should have been so bad, maybe they got better as time went on?

I would just mention that I've got no particular flag to fly for CCM or any other make. If it had been unreliable it would have gone long ago and it was chosen after looking at a number of other makes / models with overlanding in mind and after years of experience with a Honda XR600.

Anyway, I'm about to put my confidence in it to the test with a UK - West Africa trip starting in 6 weeks and a 1500 mile round trip to the alps next week as a shakedown.

I think that is the point, made by backofbeyond: one-off cases do not, statistically or on any other basis, make the best examples overall.

One of the worst bikes for reliability that I have owned (in recent times anyway, discounting old british bikes!) was a Yamaha - guess what, I have still bought Yamahas since those bad times, but it took me a little while to get over the anti-Yamaha feeling that I developed during the "lemon" experience.

What is useful are the threads that collate information about common faults that are known to exist in certain makes and models of bikes - there is one in here for KTMs and there is the making of something similar (and this already exists on other websites) in here for certain BMWs.
KLRs have their "doohickey" on record and some people have issues with the camchain tensioner for Suzuki DRZs.

__________________
Dave

Well put Dave. And some of us (e.g. yours truly) aim for trouble by buying Italian. But the strange thing is that my old Quota has proven to be more reliable with fewer (practically none) issues than my previous BMW. Bikes are strange creatures for sure...

__________________
HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

Hey Guys dont get me wrong I'm not trying to get people to slag off Bikes, I have suffered a bad time with that bike and now I can laugh about it, so it seems can others.

My Bike was a new model the year I purchased it and I dont think its good of any manufacturer to use its customers to do its R&D especially when they didnt offer a discount on the Bikes. I know CCM has got its act together although it has gone bust since. They started using the Suzuki engines and electrics which helped.

I spoke to other owners at the time and heard similar stories. I also had a laugh with an ex dealer in Newcastle who said he always made sure he had a couple of XRs with him so they could tow him home from the hills.

My experiences taught me that its best to stick with a Yamaha or Honda because of Global Parts availability.

Anyhows enjoy what you got the more of us out there the better.

Stuxttr - I can appreciate what you're trying to do and it's always hard to find out the truth about the shortcomings of any bike before you buy one. You won't find anything in the press until a bike is so old that the manufacturers have disowned it so its only word of mouth on sites like this that is likely to give you some clues. When I was looking a couple of years ago I had a list of characteristics that I wanted the bike to have based on my XR experience (and loads of others going back 30 years). That produced a whittled down list of about half a dozen.
Info on this site and others told me:

XRL650 Honda - too high for my short legs, would probably have to import one, trouble getting bits in UK
DRZ Suzi - cam chain tensioner as mentioned above, vulnerable side cases etc. Seemed very small and fragile when I tried one.
BMW 650 - Chris Scott's tale of using one in Libya put me off but I got as far as negotiating a price for one with a dealer. We couldn't agree on fixing a seat tear so I walked.
CCM Rotax - cheap and with loads of high quality bits - WP suspension etc. A reputation for being unreliable ( I was told that by the dealer selling it!) but I had two years to prep it - how hard could it be?
CCM Suzuki - I came very close - As above with a Japanese engine, but electric start only. Being stranded in Mauri with a bike I couldn't start has made me wary of depending on electrics - especially when your life depends on it. A bit luddite I agree but we are the sum of our prejudices!
CRM250 Honda - A crazy choice but I love two strokes. Deleted when I couldn't think how to carry enough two stroke oil for 7000 miles.

How do you make sense of that? It could have been any one of them if the right bike / deal had come along. I've had enough cr*p bikes from most manufacturers over the years to be wary of all of them. What I've ended up with is the result of luck, negotiating skills (lack of), what was on ebay /at local dealers at the time, some experience and knowledge of endemic faults gleaned from the internet, HU meets etc. The thing that tipped it in the direction of CCM was that I'd been on one of the factory rideouts in the lakes some years before and been quite impressed (although not enough to buy one at the time!)


CCM have had more resurrections than a zombie movie and are still going (at the time of writing anyway!). The Suzuki engine is throwing up a couple of recurring faults - cylinder base gasket leaking oil, 5th gear wearing and a few bottom end explosions on bored out to 710 versions (source - owners club)