Maybe the best bike ever made the ST 1300

[rally]

 

Right now In the market for a NEW bike...I am in our club, the Ulysses, Blue Liners, and listen to tales of woe from BMW,Triumph, Harley, Yamaha ETC owners of bits that constantly fail, like timing belts, brake discs, shocks Etc Etc. 

Washing tenderly my 2003 St 1300, i thought of what I had spent on it over the 170,000 klms.  Beside normal wear items like tyres and brake pads etc I had only replaced steering head bearings at 40,000klms, a thermostat at 100,000klms,  and I cannot think of any other bike which has given such faithful service to a bloke who gives it heaps most of the time.. Having had test rides on numerous other brand bikes I keep coming back to the Faithful Old Girl, shame they have discontinued them after 13 years of production...

Oh well, now on the prowl for another ST1300 with as low mileage as I can find, to last me another ten years or so,  BUT WAIT, I just wonder how many KLMS the old girl still has in her,  My mechanic said that there is NO WEAR in the overhead gear at all, never had to replace a shim, could go to 300 or even 400,ooo klms ????  Not worth very much now, perhaps I should keep her, after all, she has forgiven me many times in my over exuberance and kept us upright at all times...

LUV THAT BIKE...
My Escape Mate.

Rally

[Biggles]

Great testimony to the bike.

Sad you had to replace the head bearing at 40,000.  Haven't heard of that before.  Maybe the dude who assembled her in Oz over-tightened it.

Clever strategy to replace it with a low km later model.  If you can afford it, and can store it, you might be glad to have a spare in the shed.

[STeveo]

At 170,000Km you are about 1/3 through its life. If it has been such a faithful bike with low running costs why do you want to replace it? As you said it is not worth a lot, so my advise would be to keep on with what you know is a good bike.
I plan to keep my poor old girl until I can no longer get parts or unable to ride it.

 

[Sabie]

Hi Rally, always in the back of my mind is what will I replace my 2004 ST1300 with. At only 60,000 odd k's I've got a long way to go before it's an immediate worry. But still I have the odd look around.

There are a lot of fine low K ST's out there, some real beauties too.

Sometimes it's not always the amount of K's on the clock but how your bike has weathered those 100's of thousands of K's how the paint and trim survived and look.

Good luck with your search, plenty of ST's out there for everyone.