Motorcycle Adventures

Well my goodness I’ve had a stressful last few days…

For those if you who may not know, here is the story… My Burgman 400 was having transmission problems… They started around the 800km mark when it was brand new…. The dealership where I bought it, refused to acknowledge it, and so I went to the Internet to do some research, and to my great disappointment discovered that it was a very common issue with my make, model and year of bike… There was at the time a few people who had dealers who were helping them, but overall, nothing significant was being done…

I took my bike to Richmond Motorsports, knowing they were a big dealer, and hoping they would be able to help me..

They indeed tried, and I was impressed that they immediately knew the problem, and even before they had seen the bike had said to come down and they knew exactly what to do. It turned out the part the replaced didn’t fix the problem (they replaced the Hub in the transmission), and so I had to go back again not long after. This time at my insistence, they replaced the clutch with a newer, updated part. It had three clutch shoes rather than 2. This has worked up until just recently… Every time the bike was fixed, it had about 800km and then started to have problems again…

This time, when I went online to see what others were saying, I discovered that not only did others also still have problems, but that others were also having repairs done, and they were not working. Not a single person who had any significant kms on their bike (more than 1000km) after any of the fixes, had resolved the issue… The next model year of bike, the 2008 model, also was starting to show trouble with the clutch… The same story all over again.

There is more to this story, but I won’t go into much more detail. So it was at that point, I threw in the towel… I had to make a choice – either I stay with it, and hope that Suzuki eventually found a fix, and fixed the bike properly, Or, get out while the getting out was good… I knew that I would have a lot of trouble selling the bike privately as just about anyone who buys a used bike does their research and would stay away from the bike… If Suzuki had a fix, they would have fixed it by now. This is such a wide spread problem, that if Suzuki could resolve it I’m sure it would, rather than continue trying to band-aid the problem. So, yesterday I went to the dealer, and traded it in for a different, more powerful model…

It’s a really frustrating situation… I lost a lot of money in the process and had so much frustration, but I just couldn’t keep riding thinking that my bike was about to break down again… There is no sign world-wide that Suzuki has found a fix, and it’s now been almost 2 years since this model was relased… and I wasn’t willing to face a summer I’m so looking forward to, riding with Nicole and Michelle and Eryk, and maybe even Jack (Jack, you are going to join us aren’t you!?) thinking that my bike would break down all the time. As it was, I was experiencing problems within less than 1000km of each service – and the first long trip we want to go on, is gong to be more than 1500km – possibly much more.

So this morning, I have a new 2008 Burgman 650 Executive.

Now, despite all my complaining, and how frustrating this situation is, I must say, this bike, although I’ve only been able to put 50km on it so far, is a DREAM to ride…. Wow, I had no idea there would be this big a difference… It has such a low center of gravity that I can stop, often without putting my feet down for several seconds, and it’s so smooth and powerful.. It’s also incredibly quite, comfortable etc…

So I got home this morning, took a nap, as I was so anxious about the whole situation I haven’t been sleeping well, and then proceeded to take apart my new bike so that I could get my StarCom communication system installed… It took me about four and half hours, but the installation went well, and looks even more professional than the last time I did it.