Ahem Ahem. They either ran all those 40,000KM at full throttle only, or it was a bad example.
Here's another example:
Israel  
plenty of GS's from 89 to 2005, most of the older ones have done over 120K and still going.

A friend's '94 GS has already went through 2 speedometer resets in the last year and a half - thats over 100K KM without a rebuild or anything of that sort.
No excessive oil consumption, the tranny still functions well.
The rear shock is pretty much dead, but I'm not surprised about that.

Well, they did say it would last a couple of 10000 km's more. Compression still was good and oil usage not high. But several major parts were out of tolerance.  I think it did a lot of km's at highway speed. They drove it from Corsica to Ireland.

I think it has a lot to do with how often you run at high rpm's. I don't know how the roads are in Israel, but in Germany with the Autobahn, 140 km/h is a pretty standard speed.  Of course you can drive faster since there's no speed limit.

Also it seems like a lot of the wear is attributed to extreme heat. I'm looking regularly on the German forum and every once in  a while there's a big-end bearing failure. Almost always the left one and it almost always happened on the autobahn.

[edit] I  suddenly remembered that in Europe, the main jet is a #120, which is really small. It makes the engine run really hot, the plugs come out bright white. This would also explain the worn valve seats.

Here in Holland we have speed limits, but I haven't heard of a GS yet that made it over 100000 km's. Most of them start to develop a big oil thirst when they're over 50-60K km's, some of them die before that because of bearing failure.  But that's mostly because the owners don't realize how fast the oil dissapears so the engine actually starts running dry.  And they don't realize because it didn't burn that much before but suddenly uses a lot of oil.

Indeed it could be that the speed and lean mixture cause the engine to heat up.
Here (Israel) the roads are generally "crap", normal riding speed *for a GS* is 100-130.

So my 2000 GS has 64000km on the clock and eats a lot of oil.

What parts should I replace in order to make it 'like almost new'?

D.

Well. I've got about 27k on my bike right now. I don't know about the rest of the problems, but my 6th gear I would bet is pretty heavily pitted. It makes a "whrr whrr" noise that's pretty noticable. It's interesting that oil consumption is so varied from bike to bike. Mine has high mileage, I KNOW the previous owner dogged it, I ride pretty hard, but it doesn't use hardly any oil at all. I have to top it off just a bit every 1000mi or so.. and then it's only maybe 1/4 way down the dipstick from being "FULL"...

As far as the heat goes, if it was running 120 mains and was travelling at 140kh (~90mph) with a smaller sprocket.... yeah. That's going to be turning the engine at close to 9k and making plenty of heat.. especially w/ those small jets.

Interesting article, thanks for summing it up!    

trey

Quote from: danci1973So my 2000 GS has 64000km on the clock and eats a lot of oil.

What parts should I replace in order to make it 'like almost new'?

D.

how much is "a lot"? IIRC, up to a liter per 1000KM is quite a lot, but still within the norm. (I myself could never live with a bike that ate so much)

Quote from: treybrad

As far as the heat goes, if it was running 120 mains and was travelling at 140kh (~90mph) with a smaller sprocket.... yeah. That's going to be turning the engine at close to 9k and making plenty of heat.. especially w/ those small jets.

Interesting article, thanks for summing it up!    

trey

Well, the bigger sprocket on the rear (same effect as smaller front sprocket) will probably make only 500 rpm difference. So the engine would be turning at around 7500 rpm... should be ok. But in combination with lean condition over a long timespan, probably destroys the engine. #120 mains makes the engine really lean. When I still had them, the sparkplugs were bright white and the valves where really white too.

For some pics of an engine that selfdestructed see: http://www.gs-500.de/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2980&highlight=pleuel

It happened at 160 km/h (100 mph) and he drove on with it in  a slow tempo for 80 km.