Just hit 70,000 miles, and soliciting maintenance opinions

Boris

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Just make the holes bigger. Problem solved.
Sitting where it does, you’d probably then open it up to water ingress from spray, with bigger debris finding its way. Then you’re back in the same cycle.

I’ve never found water in mine, or any sign of moisture, just lots of dust and grit type debris. Current process works fine for me, and it takes about 1-2 minutes a year.
 

jeckyll

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I cleaned the holes out yesterday, definitely had a bit of crud in them. Better way would be to cover the outside of the box with fine wire mesh, but really, it's probably not worth it, easy enough to clean out.
 

wera688

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Mine has 178,000 miles. I service the forks yearly. I replaced the wheel bearings at 100K. Spark plugs are replaced every 40-70,000 miles. Other than engine/filter/rear drive oil changes/air filter cleaning, nothing else has been done.
 
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RCinNC

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Thanks Wera. The thread got a little off-topic, so I appreciate hearing from someone with the relevant experience. I was surprised that I had to replace a wheel bearing as early as I did.
 

stutrump

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RcinNc. It sounds to me like your servicing is already very complete. Just keep riding!! Mine has 130,000 and has never had valve check. It's all fine. I change oil regularly, added a manual cct at about 90,000.
Otherwise it's stock and no problems except a couple of new coilsover the years.
I'm sure yours will be fine with your current level of servicing
 
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ballisticexchris

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It is very interesting to read post after post of not properly maintaining these bikes and still getting reliable miles out of them. I could never bring myself to own and ride a poorly maintained machine.

It is apparent my upbringing is different than most. I was raised as a child and young man to maintain everything mechanical to the highest level possible. This began when I was about 5 years old when I disassembled and cleaned a set of Stromberg carbs for my dads flathead.

I get a proud feeling inside whenever I bring my vehicles in for service. Almost without fail I get comments on how well they are taken care of.

I’m closely following this thread out of curiosity more than anything else. One thing for sure is so far, almost no one posting on this thread is anywhere close to following the service manual schedule. Stretching out the service interval to ridiculous miles is the norm.
 

WJBertrand

Ventura Highway
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Gone are the days when one had to replace plugs, points, condenser, set the timing, adjust the carburetor, change the oil, repack the wheel bearings and lube all the zerk fittings every few thousand miles. Old, no longer relevant, habits die hard though.


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stutrump

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I get your points Chris...BUT...over here in the UK, garages are VERY costly.
Making huge assumptions here but my guess is that my income will be lower than many other bikers (especially in uk where it is more of a leisure activity nowadays).
My point being, and I know this is hard to accept for some, I simply cannot afford the £800 - £1000 for a valve check, which is what I've been quoted by dealers here.
Yes, it's a risk to not do it and yes, I could do it myself but my 'normal' life...ie prior to lockdown, meant using my bike every day...i typically work 7 day weeks.
Not looking for sympathy....just trying to excuse myself for abusing my bike!
 

squarebore

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I get your points Chris...BUT...over here in the UK, garages are VERY costly.
Making huge assumptions here but my guess is that my income will be lower than many other bikers (especially in uk where it is more of a leisure activity nowadays).
My point being, and I know this is hard to accept for some, I simply cannot afford the £800 - £1000 for a valve check, which is what I've been quoted by dealers here.
Yes, it's a risk to not do it and yes, I could do it myself but my 'normal' life...ie prior to lockdown, meant using my bike every day...i typically work 7 day weeks.
Not looking for sympathy....just trying to excuse myself for abusing my bike!
I don't check valves unless they are due AND the bike is hard to start. Then I would just sell it to some one else and let them do it. I reckon some people way over-service their machines. Brake fluid a couple times a year? Oil filters every change? Oil more frequently than recommended? That's all good if that's what you bought the bike for, if you are OCD or if you love doing it. I just like to ride it.

I forgot to wash it last Wednesday. That makes two years in a row now.

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Tenman

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I don't check valves unless they are due AND the bike is hard to start. Then I would just sell it to some one else and let them do it. I reckon some people way over-service their machines. Brake fluid a couple times a year? Oil filters every change? Oil more frequently than recommended? That's all good if that's what you bought the bike for, if you are OCD or if you love doing it. I just like to ride it.

I forgot to wash it last Wednesday. That makes two years in a row now.

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Don't forget to change your brake lines every 4 years too. :D
 

bimota

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i just put a manual cct in at 23750 on a gen 1 it was a bit noisy but my bike fires on the button first time runs great, so i,m going to to valve service at about 30000 miles,
now yes it,ll cost £500-£800 but at my mileage thats about every 5 yrs gives me alot of time to save for the one after that, everything else gets done yearly by a garage as well and to be honest doesn,t cost that much

rob
 
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ballisticexchris

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I get your points Chris...BUT...over here in the UK, garages are VERY costly.
Making huge assumptions here but my guess is that my income will be lower than many other bikers (especially in uk where it is more of a leisure activity nowadays).
My point being, and I know this is hard to accept for some, I simply cannot afford the £800 - £1000 for a valve check, which is what I've been quoted by dealers here.
Yes, it's a risk to not do it and yes, I could do it myself but my 'normal' life...ie prior to lockdown, meant using my bike every day...i typically work 7 day weeks.
Not looking for sympathy....just trying to excuse myself for abusing my bike!
I totally understand. That's one of the attractive features of this bike. An also why I purchased it. Cost of ownership is cheap and reliability is amazing on this bike. There is no "one size fits all" approach to maintaining a machine. My bad for throwing out my strong opinion on how I keep my bikes reliable.

If you simply pass over my anal retentive posts, you will see members of this forum who have purchased this bike for the sole purpose of riding the crap out of it with little more than oil changes and miner repairs as needed. I'm actually impressed and relieved to know I can expect this machine to last me well into retirement. I am not the average Super Tenere owner who grinds out the miles on this bike.

I have sympathy for all of us going through this crap.

Point being that this thread is going to be full of posts with members who are having many trouble free miles. I seriously doubt that Ron will have to do much more than what he already is doing. 70,000 miles is nothing to sniff at. That is an amazing amount of reliable saddle time on one machine.
 

Tombstone

Stir the oil Baby!
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I'd kind of like to drag this thread back to my original intent for starting it. There are probably lots of other threads on here for Obsessive Maintenance Compulsion Disorder, so whether or not someone rebuilds their forks every time the Moon is in the seventh house wasn't really what I was shooting for. I realize that the pool of riders who've put 100,000 miles or more on the S10 is fairly small so I didn't expect there to be a lot of relevant input, and I do appreciate the responses from the guys who've had that longevity with the bike.
A very interesting post (and read start to finish) for me as I have 77,000 miles on mine. And I do NOT suffer from OMCD. :)
 

RCinNC

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I've put an additional 4500 miles on mine since I started this thread on June 24. Unsurprisingly, it's still running like a Rolex.
 

Scoop47501

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I've put an additional 4500 miles on mine since I started this thread on June 24. Unsurprisingly, it's still running like a Rolex.
I have a Rolex and it's been in for repairs for failures. The Tenere is better and at 47,000 miles on mine it has more miles too :)
 

RCinNC

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Yeah, I knew that when I typed that, no matter what example I used of a symbol of quality/reliability, someone would respond that they had that item and it had failed them.
 

~TABASCO~

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Short story: $20 bearing blew up.... instead of changing it, it will now be $500-$1000 in parts + all the other expenses and BS "adventure". LOL


Just a fun little side story, a buddy and I (both on Tenere's) took a quick 2000K mile trip to Arkansas for a few days. First off road day he starts to hear "crunching" from the rear brake. We are talking on the intercom and tell him its probably a rock caught in the caliper, lets stop on level ground. No rock, but I start to see some evidence of "something is not right". (my brain goes into overdrive) We are probably 15-20 miles from a paved road and out in the sticks. Long story short- it gets worst and worst. My brain is telling me I know what it probably is but there is nothing we can do this second. We keep the speed really slow and make it to the paved road. Across the street is a SMALL restaurant. We are so far out in the stick non of our phones work, but one cell phone from the restaurant owner works... We give him $10 and bum his phone. LOL

We start stripping down the rear end of the bike, the rear wheel bearing has blown up. SUPER blown up. Just as I pulled the wheel out of the swing arm the 'square' bearings fell out on the gravel parking lot. The outer wear 'core' of the outer race was wadded up and peeled off the hard outer race. (I dont think I've ever seen anything like that before) and the inner race had chunks broken off of it. At some point the bearing seized and broke the ABS sensor tab off the ABS disc and spun the disc around. The ripped off the ABS sensor and tore the hell out of that ABS disc and the inside of the rear hub. So much so we might have to look into replacing the rear hub. And of course the ABS disc. Etc, Etc, Etc

This bike has 115K miles and this is not the first time the bearing has blown up. I replaced the first fried bearing at about 40K and then at about 80K we replaced it out of caution, and now at 115K it blew up again. At 80K we replaced all the wheel bearings. But this rear non-drive bearing has always been the ISSUE.

EVERYONE has there own ideas and thoughts on service, but in THIS case, a $20 bearing would have saved $500-$1000 in parts.

He got his bike towed to the Yamaha shop 2.5 hours away, I road back to where we were staying, that was 2+ hours of dirt roads and super twisty bad ass roads! The tow truck guy was a 'gas' and was driving like a mad man to get him there before they closed, he did. The tow truck service charge was really inexpensive under the circumstances, after he dropped off the bike the tow truck guy gave my buddy a ride back 30 minutes to our starting location. He was totally cool about it! The next morning my buddy gets a ride back into town to Yamaha and they work on his bike for a few hours and get it 'back together' and charged him something like $100... Super awesome! Then we spent the next days having a great time and everything else was uneventful "for the most part" ! LOL As always there is more to the story ! LOL Me accidentally hitting a large rain 'stopper' bump across the road in the middle of a dirt road at about 55Mph off-road. Jumping the Super Tenere like a Super Cross bike 10 feet in the air... That was fun, NOT... no crash... Another story. ..... I cant wait to put my bike up for sale one day, and have the beans to say, "never been off road". LOL

Now that we are both back safe and sound he will be ordering all the parts and I will be re building the rear wheel area.

I did learn something new, when the wheel bearing failed, the hub 'fell down' at some point. It shoved the ABS sensor into the ABS pick up ring. It wiped the ring "off". Its basically only a metal ring now, no more black. After he got the bike back from Yamaha there is no ABS, there is no speedometer and the dash looks like a Christmas tree. And there is no odometer or trip odometer. I know why and understand how Yamaha does things now with that sensor, but I didnt at that moment. But just a FYI for anyone that might damage that rear ABS sensor. Yamaha uses that for several things.


#3 is the bearing that blew up.
#22 is totally screwed and ground into a donut
#6 is basically nothing any longer
#4 looked like it had two bullet holes shot through it
#1 is machined and damaged
#5 needs to be cleaned up
**New rear ABS sensor

Also, the disc fell into the rear caliper carrier. It shaved off quite a bit of aluminum. So much so that im concerned about fracture. We will probably look for a used one to replace the damaged one.

The rear disc is just about ready to be changed again, so that was a given. But when it fell into the carrier it wore some nice gouges into the out side rotor surface. Lovely. LOL

Keep an eye on the wheel bearings. If they are not smooth as silk you might "consider" throwing in a new one. It might save you a ton of cash, safety, frustration !
(Also, the #2 bearing probably was under stress when the other bearing failed. It had some funky loads on it, we will be replacing all the bearings im sure.)

Was all this worth $20 ? LOL


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