Marques is gutted???? But surely that seems strange. Sure, you found a problem, but please show me the engine that has no problems...........I think that it cannot exist!!!!

Reliability
 

On my XT660Z riding from Essex uk, i have toured around Yorkshire, Scotland, Cornwall, and France, never ever having one problem.
Push the button and she fires up every time and takes me wherever i want to go without a any hesitation whatsoever in any weather or conditions.
Look on the internet and see how many off/on road touring holiday companys all over the world use them on their fleet because of the genuine capability and trust they have in this model.

There are many bikes with failures, many with bad designs and many with build quality issues, but... Not that many of them with gearboxes falling apart after 12k miles of normal use with scheduled services.
Small percentage? Well, try to understand this when your bike falls in this small percentage.
One thing i know for sure - i won't recommend XT to anyone - delicate bike with rubbish gear ratios for offroad (i have only understand this after i switch to KTM).

There's one more thing i would like to point out - Someone has said, that 5 cases in thousands of sold bikes is not a lot... Now questions:

1. How many XT owners are actually registered on forums?? I know 6 Tenere owners and only 2 out of 7 are registered on this forum... What is the real ratio of owners to forum members???

2. How many owners will share this bad experience online??? True is - if you share this online it will stay there for ages, and it won't help you sell your bike in the future and might cause problems if next owner find out the history. I have been asked by many people why i announcing things like that instead of repairing and selling the bike ASAP.

3. So how many XT's are falling apart? Maybe we are seeing only top of the iceberg over the water? :-)

I'll try and answer your questions (IMVHO).

Of course, it's difficult to say, but out of the nearly 10,000 registered members here, a good portion would have owned one at one time or another. There are, without doubt, non-owning members, and members who have sold their bikes on, but even if it's only a half, that's still a lot of bikes!

It is a fact there have been 4551 XT660s registered in the UK (up to 31st March 2014), and as I mentioned before, that's just in the UK. So which ever way you dress it up, XTs with gearbox failures form a miniscule proportion. Even if there were fifty dead gearboxes just in the UK, it would still be just 1%.

People with an axe to grind generally shout the loudest, so you'd actually expect there to be a disproportionately larger proportion of owners sharing bad experiences. People who are happy with their bike, generally just ride it and get on with it and don't bother with forums, for those that have problems usually their first port of call is to go to a forum, to either search for a solution, or try and find out if others have had the same trouble - strength in numbers and all that.

Believe me, I've done it. When the main bearings failed on my 2 year old, 23,000 mile Subaru (which had been dealer serviced and owned by me from new), the first place I went was online, joined uklegacy.com and spent a few hours trying to find others with similar concerns and posted a couple of moans.

Six, maybe seven, perhaps ten, maybe a few more. The point is we don't really know, and it will be impossible to find out. But you can, without doubt say it is a statistically small proportion.

I must make it clear that I, and probably all the others who have contributed to this thread with positive reviews of the XT660, are not having a "pop" at those who have had the misfortune of having a wrecked gearbox/engine. All we are trying to do is redress the balance, give both sides, another outlook and be realistic and in my case, try and damp down a little of the scare mongering.

Poor marques is clearly having sleepless nights over his XT gearbox, which is why I felt obliged to put his mind at rest, instill some Karma. I wouldn't want everybody who owns an XT here, or in the wider world to start having unnecessary nightmares about their bike's gearbox exploding and to stop enjoying their bike for fear of it happening based on a handful of XTs that manifest the problem. It is nothing to do with re-sale values, or sullying the XT660's reputation that I wish for calm, it's just that it isn't always constructive to stir up panic and worry in others in these situations. Yes, let the world know your gearbox has broken by all means, and you don't like the gear ratios and it's a bit flimsy, that's abosolutely fine, it's your opinion, but I'm really not really sure anyone can justifiably suggest this issue "maybe the tip of the iceberg" and Armageddon is just round the corner for all XT owners! ;)

Bartosz, believe me, I can empathise with you, I really can, and all the other guys who've had the same problem. I would be equally pi55ed off and "gutted" if the same happened to my bike, and I would more than likely tell everyone here if it did too! But, being a realist, I'd like to think I'd take a rational outlook after the initial anger had subsided; as I indeed found with my Subaru woes...

There aren't many �27,000 new modern cars, especially Japanese ones, whose main bearings fail after just 23,000 miles of normal use and with scheduled dealer stamped services! With the Subaru though, I soon realised (after online research and forum surfing) there were just six cases in the UK (statistically small numbers as with the XT), all apparently caused by poor cleaning of swarf and debris out of the oil-ways on assembly - it didn't in fact mean impending doom for every Subaru Legacy Boxer Diesel owner in the UK, it was just a handful of cases caused by sloppy assembly, for a few unlucky owners (me being one of them). Maybe if we get fifty or a hundred cases of XT gearboxes going AWOL, we can start to legitimately suggest the tip of the iceberg is becoming visible and we can all start panicking and jump ship.

For now, let's keep calm, it's a legitimate concern, no doubt, one that we should all be aware of, but there's no need to give everybody grey hairs - not just yet anyway! ;)

What is interesting though, is that all the bike's with failed gearboxes recently (except Chenko's) are blue, 2009 and are Tenere's. Why isn't this happening as often with the XTX/XTR? Are they better? Why aren't white, red or baby-sick Teneres prone to the problem? Maybe we can draw other conclusions?Maybe this is where we should be diverting our attention... :eusa_think:

Help! All of the above...
I'm not intending to create a minefield here, but I worked for a Husky dealer in 2010. The for strokes were going 'bang' everywhere. Once the firm pulled its head out of its ����, and ran recommended 10W-60 oil, the problems almost stopped completely. Could it be that a heavier oil might protect the gearbox better, especially if it's flimsy as has been suggested.
Just a thought... Keep calm, people, it's not a rule!

mmmmm...interesting opinion based on your experience...

....I run my moto on 10W50 100% synthetic rather than 10W40,because it's �8.50 for 2 litres here.

I have 38,000kms hard and fast kms on my 2008 model with oil changes every 5000kms.

It'll be interesting if I get any problems manifesting especially as I ride back to Maroc next week,not only on 1400kms off road but long autoroute rides to get there.

I wonder if this idea is why KTM use 10W60 (as far as I know)on the fragile 690 engines?...


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Maroc !!!!! you kept that quiet :llorando[1]: couldn't have made it though , i have to go to the UcK
Stay in touch though mate and i will come down for a brew !!!

10w60 .......yes very interesting , can't hurt and i'm due an oil change

Eve'nin Phil....

Just skipping over to recce some more trails....Super U locally are selling 10W50. Just changed the oil/filter today.The oil that came out was still OK to be honest...but for that price why not?

As an aside keep an eye on your pins on the brake callipers. My front ones had dried up making the callipers not have any movement. The inside of calliper had just started to rub on one of the discs. Got it in the nick of time. My fault:I should've kept them greased up.

The parts diagrams show that you can't buy each screw in,black Japanned pin to replace any that are corroded but that you have to buy the pin and the alloy bit that it screws into.

As they're Brembo maybe there's a crossover moto that'll have them for sale separately?

Anyhoooo.....I guess KTM will be the first parts diagrams to go hunting over these coming Winter nights!

:)


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Cheers mate on the pins and oil

Back to the oil subject !!!

Just done an oil and filter change on my DR650, 2.4 lts and because i only had 1 ltr of bike oil and 1 ltr of cheap Leclerc car oil i topped it up with 0.4ltr of DIESEL OIL !!!!!! hell she sounds SWEET :emoticons:

Phil

Good stuff, mate! I sometimes wonder whether it's worth the panic!