and 50 pounds heavier!

 

Chain maintenance is simple. Even more so with an auto oiler.

Chains are the lightest, most efficient, most cost effective way to transfer power.

 

Do you use an auto-oiler, and if so, which one, and what are the pro's and con's of that one? Would you get a different one now, if you had it to do over? Many thanks

 

no thanks

 

Suzuki would never get the gearing right anyway - so there would be far more complaints about that than the fuss of maintaining chain and sprockets.

 

Got that right !! My 2014 Strom 1000 was geared to go 200 mph right out of the factory!!

 

I'd be happy with a belt, much simpler and lighter than a shaft, but not great for folks who like to go off road a lot.

 

Yes a good belt drive. The Buell Ulysses and several HD and smaller 650 BMWs have used them. My son’s 160hp Arctic Cat snow machine uses a belt and never had a problem.

 

Had two shafties, '82 Suzuki GS1100G, and '03 Kawasaki Concours ZG1000. Both were solid, reliable systems.

Difficult and expensive to change final drive ratio (and would take some custom machining) and to repair when trouble arises. Adds weight to machine.

chain and both sprockets are wear items like brake pads. Relatively cheap to replace them and not very time consuming.

 

I have owned two shaft drive bikes, both BMW K bikes. Those shafts do get maintenance and its not super simple to do. They make the bike heavier and add a lot to the cost. For a long distance touring bike (which is already heavy) they seem a reasonable solution. For a bike like the Wee......add a grand to the price and 50 pounds and lots more complexity to the bike. Not a good trade off. Modern O-ring chains are pretty simple and inexpensive to take care of and last a long, long time.

 

Look up the recent recall of up to hundreds of thousands of BMW's for issues with the shaft drive. It is so easy to maintain chain drives, and pretty darn inexpensive.

 

Not all shaft drive systems are created equal. BMW has had final drive issues for 20 years now. BMW insists on selling their shaft drives with single sided swing arms.

Honda and Yamaha shaft drives are much more robust.

 

You don’t just put a shaft drive on any bike. Most shaft drive motorcycles are built from the ground up with the shaft drive in mind.

Fifty pounds heavier, not if designed well. Maybe 20 pounds.

Less efficient than a chain, yes a shaft gives up some frictional losses. Meh. I have power to spare anyway.

At the end of the day, a Strom’s v twin configuration lends itself to chain drive.

 

Shaft drive systems require additional checkups beside oil changes, to say that shaft drives are "maintenance free" is not completely true;

Here’s why you should check your drive-shaft from time to time – DriveMag Riders

riders.drivemag.com

 

I have a buddy who has an R1150 RT he bought with 10k miles...now has 235k miles....all service by him. Shaft is a maintenance item but time consuming, so expensive in shop dollars. Chains are pretty damned reliable and easy to service if you are honest about it...fill with fuel, lube chain, repeat until chain shits the bed some 25k to 45k miles later.... cheap, easy and effective. What's not to love?

 

I'll have to differ with you on the difficulties of shaft drive maintenance, at least as far as a Super Tenere goes. There's very little maintenance required on the Yamaha final drive. The final drive oil needs changed every 19,000 miles, and I pull the final drive every time I do the swingarm maintenance (at 26,000 mile intervals) so I can lubricate the splines. Pulling the final drive (after you remove the rear wheel) involves unscrewing four acorn nuts. One good tug and the whole final drive assembly pulls out. Yamaha designed a pretty solid, bulletproof shaft drive. I've got just shy of 100,000 miles on mine, and I've never even had a seal leak in it. In a comparison between maintenance on my shaft drive and maintenance on the chain of my old DL650, I'll take the shaft drive any day. I'm going to lament the day when I have to retire the Yamaha, because shaft drives are becoming pretty uncommon, and it's likely when I eventually replace the Yamaha I'm going to have to return to a chain drive.

You'll never see a shaft drive on a V-Strom. The amount of R&D costs Suzuki would incur to redesign the DL650 to accept a shaft drive would probably push the DL650 into the same price area as a BMW F850GS, which kind of shoves the DL650 out of its traditional comfort zone of "quality budget adventure bike". I don't know how many V-Stroms Suzuki sells, but I bet they'd sell a lot fewer of them if they were in BMW price ranges.

 

 

Totally agree with @RCinNC "I'll take a shaft drive any day". I've owned many shaft drive bikes from a '97 BMW R1100RS, Kaw Concours ZG1000 and 1400GTR to my latest '17 BMW R1200RS. On most of those bikes I've put 50k plus miles on without any issues whatsoever and the only maintenance done was gear (final drive) oil changes at recommended intervals -- easy peasy! As for the extra weight, I never noticed it on any of those bikes when jumping from one of my chain bikes to those with shaft drive.

 

There's enough shaft drive adventure bikes out there IMO - Suzuki doesn't need to make one.

 

I can only think of four: A Super Tenere, a BMW 1200/1250, a Moto Guzzi V85 and a Triumph Tiger 1200. If I had to guess, I'd say the Super Tenere won't be around much longer.

 

Shaft all the way, Front & Rear please:

 

After owning all 3 drive systems my order of preference is Belt, Shaft, and a distant 3rd would be chain.

Belt - no maintenance, clean, quiet, light, with the least power loss, inexpensive to design. My Harley's first belt went 85K miles, the second (current) belt has 130K+ miles with no signs of wear. Downside - a stone caught between the belt and pulley can possibly break the belt, hence they usually have an upper and lower guard. I don't run any.

Shaft - low maintenance, clean and quiet. Downside - heavy, power robbing, shaft effect possibly. Most BMW shaft problems are due to splines not being greased causing them to rust and seize. Easy to grease, the problem is BMW doesn't use much grease on assembly, and worse, has not listed greasing in the maintenance schedule.

Chain - Inexpensive to design and build, minimal power loss. Downside - lubing, dirty, noisy, short lifespan. Chains will last 100's of thousands of miles in an enclosed oil bath, unfortunately spinning the rear wheel of a motorcycle is not the best environment for life span, so they become sacrificial. Perfectly fine for low mileage riders. I did a chain experiment here:

My Big Chain Experiment

The Experiment - To see how long a chain could last if kept well lubricated? I ended up getting 53,762 miles. Why Bother? I’ve had a few chain driven bikes over the years, as well as shaft and belt driven bikes, and had become pretty accustomed to replacing chains & sprockets between 24K - 30K...

www.stromtrooper.com

 

...

Chain - Inexpensive to design and build, minimal power loss. Downside - lubing, dirty, noisy, short lifespan. Chains will last 100's of thousands of miles in an enclosed oil bath, unfortunately spinning the rear wheel of a motorcycle is not the best environment for life span, so they become sacrificial. Perfectly fine for low mileage riders. I did a chain experiment here:

Please define "Low Mileage Riders".

I've been averaging over 50,000 km / 31,000 miles per year for the last several years and since I got my first Strom in 2006 I have ridden my Stoms a total of 699,789 km or 434,828 miles.


My chains have been lasting over 50,000 miles just by lubing with every tank of gas and after every ride in the rain. This takes less than 20 seconds with the bike on the centerstand.

That was on my first three Stroms. On my current Strom (2020 DL1050) I am using a Tutoro automatic chain oiler. I top up the lube about every 1,000 km. A bit fiddly on the adjusting of the Tutoro but really little effort. My DL1050 has only had one replacement chain so far and i did that early at 76,093 km / 47,281 miles as I was stil getting used to the abilities of the Tutoro. Not too much history with the Tutoro but the DL1050 is just over two years old and only has (as of last night's gas fill) 122,615 km or 76,189 miles.

I have owned chain and shaft drive bikes, and have ridden bikes with Belt (Harley road King rental.) They all worked well on their respective bikes. The drive system is pretty much a non-issue for me.

All seem to work.

..Tom

 

delete

 

No messy oil spray, no constant adjusting, no noise, no worn out sprockets or busted links. I'll never go back to a chain unless I absolutely have to. Drop the gear oil every oil change, button it up, and no worries until the next service. They suck some power but I'm not a racer so I don't care, it's well worth the trade. BMW had some issues with theirs that were later resolved, occasionally a wing drive grenades but it's a rarity, the Japanese drives are pretty much bulletproof. I think for the VStrom to go gear it would take a complete engine redesign and if they did it to the 650 it would make a dog a lazy dog. V 1000 would probably be good to go in the power area. This is my second shaft drive bike, now when looking at road bikes it's one of the prerequisites for consideration.

 

Driven both over 40 years... I would choose chain for this bike.

 

Chain for the Strom is a good idea, but you can't compete with maintenance on a shaft bike.
Different bikes with different purposes I suppose. I'll take my FR over my 3 chain driven bikes anyday of the week....

 

I kind of laugh when I see complaints about the weight of the various components on our bike, and how they rob the bike of power. I mean, have you ever seen a photo of us ADV riders at a gathering? I think our demographic skews a little heavy towards the "old fat guy" market (me included). The easiest, cheapest way for a lot of us to remove excess component weight would be to start skipping lunch...

 

I too like the weight people discuss a 500lb + bike loaded up with another 150 of panniers, gear, kitchen sinks topped up with a 90b tool roll and a 46" waistline and worried about the 7 pounds a shaft drive might have over a chain drive system. People also forget to calculate the entire chain and sprockets to include heavy cush drives/sprocket carriers.

But if we skipped lunch we'd then we'd eat two dinners t make up for it. There is no free lunch

 

SHAFT vs CHAIN...let's not forget about the "Wow factor"...we all like our bikes to be "presentable", and love to get "positive comments" from bystanders

here's the: "Wow that looks good !!!" (good shaft is always preferred...you may even get one of these 🤙😘)

and here's the chain: "Wow OMG !!!"

 

...let's not forget about the "Wow factor"...we all like our bikes to be "presentable", and love to get "positive comments" from bystanders

Not me. The less attention my vehicle gets, the better. That's the main reason I hate the stoopid gold wheels.

 

and here's the chain: "Wow OMG !!!"



[/QUOTE]

Well now.....there are some of us that do take a bit more pride in our ride... I came off a shaft (ST1100) to the DL and keep all as clean as I did the ST

, this DL is working on 25K, chain & sprokets @15K... and has an oiler

 

My other bike is an '18 R1200RS. Shaft drive maintenance is very easy. Change the rear drive oil once a year (takes less then 10 min) and every couple of years pull the driveshaft and lube the splines. Pulling the shaft is a hand full of bolts. The days of exploding drive shafts is long gone but that old wives tale still persists.

 

I wouldn’t call 15 years of final drive issues an “old wives tale”. I hope BMW has figured it out by now. There is a lot to like about BMW motorcycles.

The issue on the newer ones, based on the two I worked on, is the accordion boot that lets water in the swing-arm.