Why bikes die

Note: This is one of those things that has been passed around the internet so many times that we're not really sure where it originated. It was posted by MIK a couple years ago, and it is thought to have come from svrider.com. Since they're a good site, we're willing to give them a link.

Share and enjoy.

Modern Japanese bikes don't wear out, they are killed by their masters.

1. The bike gets loving care for the first three years.

2. Then it gets sold to some young thrasher who either destroys it in a single vehicle accident or keeps it for two years, then sells it to an even younger and even more clueless thrasher.

3. Finally it ends up in the hands of someone who rides less than 1000 miles a year. This guy leaves it in the pounding rain all winter and is surprised to find the battery dead on the first sunny day in spring. He borrows a charger from his mother’s boyfriend and manages to get the now damaged battery to hold just barely enough juice to start the bike once. After this first sunny day of spring the guy only rides the bike 3 more times that year. Since he doesn't want to spend cash on replacing the worthless battery, he has to charge the battery each time he rides it. And now the charging system is starting to strain from constantly being at full output pumping electrons into a partially shorted battery. Motorcycle riding becomes too much of a pain in the butt and he leaves it parked for another winter in the rain. Next year the fuel has turned harder than epoxy and has completely plugged the pilot jets.

3b. This is the time when BrianM starts to think about buying it.

4. It won't start at all and is traded to a girlfriend's brother for a case of Schmidt beer. The new owner buys a battery, but can only occasionally get it to start, and it dies at idle. He eventually decides that Jap bikes are cheap crap and buys a leather Harley Davidson baseball cap to wear to the tavern.

5. The bike gets pushed behind a dumpster at a crack motel and remains there until the motel owner pushes it out to the street where it sits on display like a dead possum until the county picks it up and puts it in impound. 6 months later it is sent to a metal recycler and smashed into 1000 Schlitz Malt Liquor cans. And up to this last point the crank bearings, cam lobes, piston rings, and all the other parts bathed in oil still have 100,000 miles of usable life left on them.

HEAR ME NOW, AND BELIEVE ME LATER,
THIS IS THE FATE OF 75% OF ALL THE YAMAHA R6'S SOLD TODAY!

Does anybody remember the Kawasaki ZX600 Ninja of 1985?

It was a cutting edge sport bike, then one of the greatest squid magnets of the late '80s and early '90s.

NOW THE LAST OF 'EM ARE PARKED BEHIND DUMPSTERS AT YER MOTHER'S PLACE!