Most unreliable bike ever owned.

[Tricky]

Without a doubt, it has to be my first RD400 (FGT 664T where are you now?)

I got it when I was 18 or 19 . It was barely 3 years old but was a complete wreck- it had been crashed, had some bits missing and an unbelievable amount of bodges for it's age ( including some wood screws ) , it didn't run, and to cap it all it had also been very badly brush-painted in awful Dulux black.
it was a 400D and originally in that dark red/burgundy colour, the 400E was what I really wanted, but I got this one for buttons so I decided to make my own "E"
I completely stripped and rebuilt it, knocked out and filled dents in the tank sprayed it up myself in E colours, even cut down the front part of the seat foam for a racier riding position
The motor was effectively a testbed for some of my 2 stroke tuning efforts, putting into practice my interpretations of go-faster knowledge gained mainly from theory in Gordon Jenning generic 2-stroke tuning book- still got that book, and a great read IMO if you are interested in the science and maths of how smokers produce their power.



Engine mods involved playing around with port heights and shapes both through physically removing metal and raising the barrels, removing portions of the back of the pistons, filling and machining of the cylinder heads and experimenting with different exhaust pipe lengths and volumes, ignition timing airbox / separate pods and of course, jetting.
All this was without a dyno, which as you can probably guess meant set up could be a bit hit and miss and as a result, I honestly can't remember how many pistons I went through but it was a lot- I do remember it destroyed a crank and a set of barrels along the way too ( or I guess more accurately I should say that I destroyed them )

Although the getting stranded and getting it rescued was memorable as a complete pain on more than one occasion, it didn't cost me much in bits as I worked part-time for a dealer and spannered for someone who raced TZs so got bits for free more often than not,
I learned loads, enjoyed it and on a good day, when it wasn't holing pistons or seizing, it was brilliant- revved to 9k which was about 2k higher than standard and would absolutely leave my mate's GS550E for dead in a straight line, happy days....

[Buckaroo]

Tough one this.
Either the CB500T, which i bought with no 2nd gear.
Stripped it down, fitted new gear then got 10 miles down the road and ......only 4 gears again. Then it ate a cam follower, so fitted another.......and another until i gave up and slotted another motor in..........which then ate a follower etc.
Or there was the husky 610sm.
Cam chain tensioner
Primary drive woodruff key
Clutch adjuster lock nut
Snapped water pump impeller (end of cam)
Rotor magnets detached and exploded filling the bottom end with a lovely magnetic sharding.
Numerous backfires which would take the carb of the inlet manifold.
Or it's piece de resistance, the knack of cold starting it.
Until i fitted a mikuni i could flatten a battery churning it over. Even with the mikuni it was 3 pumps, turn it over until it starts to hunt then a mill of throttle just to catch it.

I had a brown CB500T, supposedly Honda's take on British parallel twin. No real problems until valve adjustment time arrived. All seized. Torsion bar valve adjustment is / was bloody useless. Had to sell for quite a loss because of this.

[Yorick]

Mine was a CB900 in 1988. I'd just come back from travelling and re-training into IT, so money was tight.Obviously a race bike came first and then a road bike. It was touch and go if it would start each day, so had the reg plate on the YPVS, just in case.

If it did get to work, there was no guarantee that it would get me home. At the end of the race season, I got rid and used the YPVS full time.

[Potter]

This is perhaps subjective, because some bikes require more maintenance than others, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're unreliable - for example my Rudge needs me to lubricate the top end valve arrangement every couple of dozen miles, but as long as I do that it is ok.

For me it's a toss up between my Ducati 600SS or my RD125LC.

I had the RD when I was 17yrs old and it was my daily transport to work and my vehicle to hang around with my mates at night.
Sometimes I would be out at night and get home late and couldn't be bothered to put it away in the garage, then if it rained in the night it wouldn't start the next day - or I'd ride to work in the dry, but it would get soaked in the work car park if it rained, then I'd have to push it 5 miles home, which I did frequently much to the amusement of everyone that regularly saw me doing so.
I tried to seal everything and even had it in the shop, but it was never cured.

The Ducati was a leisure bike, but an absolute pain in the arse, sometimes it would start firing on only one cylinder, sometimes the indicators would just stop working, sometimes the lights would go off when I still had two hours to ride home in the dark.
In the end I got sick of it and stopped riding it - then very sensibly bought another bike - a Ducati 900 that was also a PITA

[bazzer]

In modern times my BMW S1000XR

Ignition barrel (would not switch off).
Fork seal (5000miles).
Left hand switch gear.
Battery (always kept on optimate)
exhaust valve seized.
Ignition coil stick.


That said great bike to go places on and I will probably get another one This one is on 25K miles and I have been on some great adventures on it.


Cheers

Bazze

[Dodgy69]

The disappearing bike was a Buell Ulysses, head n shoulders winner, but the Ktm 1290 gt had issues.
L/h switch gear..warranty replacement.
QS, not the best.
Finding neutral became almost impossible.
Oil top ups required.
Leaking front brake master cylinder.

For a brand new bike at that price, I expect better.

[neilf]

I think my most unreliable bike must be my first...
A garelli tiger cross. 50cc's of power that would either chew up the woodruff key and grind to a halt or occasionally when starting up would run backwards throwing the pedal backwards. Happy days.
Kept it about 2 months before getting an FS1E

[moth]

BSA Starfire - engine blew up every 5 mins

I had the b25ss goldstar. Just as bad. I did love it though. Cant imagine why.

So did I. It was a dog.

Any 250 with BSA on the tank was bad news, especially from the last gap days. They were sending them out with primered frames as the finish coat...

[Amulree]

Of my bikes the most unreliable was a BMW R1200RT bought new from Southport Superbikes (when they were that). The tyre pressure sensor problem was quite a saga and BMW were not interested. Southport Superbikes were great, but it was just agro! That stopped me from buying BMWs and new bikes.......much more fun and value going used! Cheers

[Doc]

350LC

Went through barrels and pistons like they were going out of fashion.
It was better once I discovered that it had a 250LC carb on the left pot, but I never trusted it again.

[chillitt]

Kawasaki S1. All the extras, K&Ns, microns and if it ever ran on all three it was outstanding, until it either seized or holed a piston...

[Taff]

Easy....R1150RT, and that experience has put me off buying another BMW.

considering how much servicing it had, (It did 32k miles in less than 2 years) It had so many oil leaks from the sight glass and oil pipes. the oil filler cap housing was forever coming loose so it landed up having a strap around the cylinder head to keep it held down in place.
squeaky back end that was an expensive fix in the shaft drive. Knackered clutch at 50k miles. Thankfully I can't remember what else went wrong on it. The only saving grace was that the travelling expenses that I was getting paid at the time covered all of the servicing and other problems.

[DW.]

As strange as it sounds, my gen 2 fz1n. My gen 1 was probably the most reliable, bullet proof did 110k trouble free kms on bike in my life.
Where as the gen 2 was the biggest heap of shit I ever owned. I pushed it 3 times in the 6 months I owned it. It fried a voltage regulator, cracked a radiator, thermostat housing, fuel level sensor, fried the secondary flies motor, did a tps, crank angle sensor, warped the front rotors.
It's fuel economy was about 30% worse than the carby gen 1 with only 5% more hp (which it actually felt like it had less than the gen 1)

The other one was a dr350 (91 model). Not entirely the bikes fault. Wasn't until I blew the top end for the 3rd time I realised it's oil pick up for the cam area was at the front of the engine and doing 1km wheelie's on it was not doing it any favours.

[Supermofo]

Touch wood I've been fairly lucky. The worst though was my first proper bike my TZR250. I had a fork seal pop and my mate and I did that in his garden. I had an oil leak from the main join in the crank case. As I was a skint student I thought I'd do this too, but took the engine out, pulled the engine cover off saw all the sh1t inside I had no idea of and put it in a box and took it to a shop. I'd had it back a few months and it blew up. I took it in to be fixed and seems the previous owner had also blown it up and fitted oversize pistons to the OE bore. So pistons and bore's were knackered. I got a set of bores but they needed honing so it ended up probably as a TZR 275. About a month after that it stopped using oil and I realised the oil pump had gone, which probably hadn't helped with the blow up. So for the rest of it's life with me I pre-mixed it and went on the safe side mix wise so on pipe it could cover all 4 lanes of Hanger lane gyratory with 2 smoke I probably kept it another year after that, but then sold it so I could go interrailing after Uni.

Since then I've managed to buy decent bikes luckily.

Reading this thread, I still don't understand where BMW get their reliability/quality engineering rep from. As a serial KTM owner I know and expect them to be a bit shoddy in places but they have a rep for that. But every reliability thread I've ever read BMW get a kicking and yet they still sell a shed load of bikes at a huge premium and get their ar*ses licked in the bike press.

On a related note a colleague of my brothers had to have his 19 plate GS recovered as the keyless ignition wouldn't open the fuel cap and he was on vapours.

[DW.]

Actually I too like [mention]Supermofo[/mention] surprised to read so many bmw's in this thread.
Was always under the impression that they were very good.
Actually thought there would be more hd's or are you uk guy's not dumb enough to own one of them?
People are crazy over here with harley. Everyone wants one. Might make them feel tough.

I couldn't think of a more useless pile of crap.

[Mr Moofo]

Might come as a great surprise - but a Buell.

Never liked starting after a lay off, started pissing fuel out of the carb on it's way to Switzerland, needed an engine rebuild at 4k miles because of worn cylinder linings, and then there were the recalls ....

I loved it!

[joe19]

Tuono V4

Wouldn't restart when it got hot. Which made trips to the petrol station interesting.

The battery would then die after a couple of attempted re-starts. So if you tried to restart the bike and it was still too hot = flat battery. Couldn't jump start it either.

Sounded amazing though. Half the miles were road tripping up to Silverstone for repairs.

[Treadeager]

BSA Starfire - engine blew up every 5 mins

Mine never blew up but did seem to break the gearbox leaf spring every other month....
[/quote]

Just " found " her

starfire (2).jpg (51.13 KiB) Viewed 2868 times

[Pirahna]

Might come as a great surprise - but a Buell.

Never liked starting after a lay off, started pissing fuel out of the carb on it's way to Switzerland, needed an engine rebuild at 4k miles because of worn cylinder linings, and then there were the recalls ....

I loved it!

I liked my Buell. But a stream of warranty work and recalls meant I part ex'd it the day the warranty ran out.

For a modern bike, I've never really owned anything unreliable, but as someone who used to ride 25k a year there's one bike that stands head and shoulders above all the others I've owned. It required constant tinkering to keep it running nicely and more trips to the dealers workshop than I would have liked, mainly for work on the shaft drive that I couldn't do at home. Not only did it spend more time off the road than anything else I've owned, it cost a lot more money to run. It melted a piston at 60k with the other on the way out as well. I did the repair work myself then sold it. I give you the BMW R1100S.

A notable mention should go the the Triumph Speed Triple 1050. This used to drink coolant, no idea where it was going. If I rode it the 40 miles to work it would need topping up to ride home. Despite several trips to the dealer to try and get it sorted they eventually gave me a refund.