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23k Miles for my First Year with 2018 V-Strom 1000XT

3K views 14 replies 10 participants last post by  offnote 
#1 ·
Hi Everyone,

I'm excited to share that I celebrated 23k miles with my (not so new anymore) V-Strom 1000XT 2018. It's been as far west as California, far south as the Florida Keys, and far north east as the Gaspe Peninsula of Quebec!

My personal goal is to see 200k miles on the clock. It's the most comfortable bike I have ever owned. My last bike was a Yamaha FJ09, but it blew up at 38k miles.
 

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#2 ·
nice bike! 200k miles is pushing it, wish you well on that one!

How did you like Gaspe? That's my favorite ride!
 
#3 ·
Thanks! I found a thread for a guy that had 400k+, so he's my inspiration.

Gaspe was awesome, but I need to do that ride again in the summer months up there. I went in late May...it was cold and wet for a lot of my time up there. The roads were awesome though. Riding along the St Lawrence was very scenic.
 
#4 ·
Vinnie, good luck on your mileage-quest! As with you and yours, my '14 DL1000 is the most comfortable bike I have owned. No denying the added comfort of increased legroom.
I have to ask...what are the details of your departed FJ-09? What happened, and why?
I have a friend with one and he'd be interested in your FJ-09 experience.
 
#14 ·
I missed the notification on this one and never responded.

My FJ09 was a 2015. I took it out to the west coast on a 10k mile round trip ride and it did very well. I began to have starting issues and had the valves checked. They were really out of whack. Just from checking the clearances, we could see the clearances moved somewhere around 15-20 thousandths.

My mechanic found that the valves could rattle inside the head because of very poorly sized valve guides. Since the valves could wiggle in the guides, the seats on the head became rounded off and didn't seal very well (hence the starting difficulties).

Unfortunately, my FJ was down from service for several months (my only ride besides my Honda Grom) because the valves were on worldwide back order. My mechanic and I both thought that was an early indication that there was an issue across the board. We also had a tremendously difficult time finding an available head. Regardless, months later, another bike came to my mechanic (FZ09 same engine) and suffered from an issue called sinking seats, where the seats on the head sink into the head and throw off the positioning/clearance of your valves. After originally diagnosing my FJ09 issues, the head off my bike was reexamined and turned out to have had sunken seats too.

On the FJ09 forum, I shared my experience and riders pretty much argued every single point I ever shared about it, blaming me any opportunity I had and insisted this isn't a widespread issue. I stopped using that forum, after that mutiny. It could have just been a range of 100 bikes affected...who knows. I thought it was worth sharing with the rider community.

FWIW, Yamaha eventually acknowledged the issue for me, which was cool, but I had to ride my V Strom to California to get them to respond lol.
 
#6 ·
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I was wondering about that.. is that only on the old model? I wonder if anyone's got to 200 on a 2014+ It's a digital display so I cant imagine they would limit it. But it's suzuki so you never know haha.
 
#9 ·
Nice! I'm at 21k in 13 mo.

I haven't ranged as far as you, most of my stuff is western US, basically spanning Calif to Colo, Montana to New Mexico.

No problems at all. Just now replacing the original chain and sprockets and brake pads, though they all have a bit more life left in them. Just basic mods - seat, centerstand, crash bars, heated grips.
 
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