mikejay Posted June 25, 2011 Share Posted June 25, 2011 I have just returned from a trip over Europe to landeck in austria just beside innsbruck 3000 miles in 6 days. I herd of people taking long trips on the xt660r but never did myself,My friend had a bmw1200gs and the yam kept up not only at speed but returned very good mpg at speeds on mororways of 90mph no problem,it had done 9000 before the trip and never used any oil during the trip the only thing i did was lubricated the chain. The main gripe which i new of was hard narrow seat and vibration through the bars mainly the right side and getting on and off because of the rear bag i am 5'9 31 inch leg but get on ok without the pack. We went on a good selection of roads from motorways to dirt tracks but i did come off on one mountain pass the only real damage was the tall screen split in two if i had the small one there would have been no damage. Love the bike and would do it again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator DirtyDT Posted June 26, 2011 Moderator Share Posted June 26, 2011 I sounds like a great trip . I would be worried about whitefinger on a big single over a lot of miles. I did similar miles on a KLE500 and, although the seat was painful at times, because it was a twin (detuned GPZ engine), it was a great experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xpag6259 Posted July 1, 2011 Share Posted July 1, 2011 Sounds like a great ride. Nothing better than putting big miles under the wheels. Glad you were pleasantly surprised with the XT. A couple of mates and myself are planning a ride from Vladivostok to UK in 2013 on 'old' 83-86 XT600s. Mine's a '83 Tenere, the other 2 are XTs with larger plastic tanks. We've 2 years to strip the bikes right down and replace all the dodgie bits. The Tenere seat is supposed to be good, but I'll be throwing an airhawk and a dead sheep over the saddle just in case. It'll be around the 25,000km I guess. We're still debating hard verses soft panniers, who's going to be in charge, west to east or east to west and a million other issues. We're all fairly 'senior' and my wife thinks we all mad. We're all from Oz and live in Melbourne We did a ride from the IoM TT in '08 to Damascus and back on eBayed XJ900s. Did around 17,000km in 7 weeks.... sheep skin worked great.... mainly to keep the saddle cool when we were off the bikes. We all paid no more than 1000 quid for the bikes, incl. the panniers and apart from an oil change in central Turkey, no issues, not even a puncture. here's a blurb re the trip, if you're interested. One of the guys is a journo. http://smh.drive.com.au/bike-news/ride-of-a-lifetime-with-no-backup-20110524-1f163.html cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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