Ah sorry - I mean load the engine heavily in (especially) 3rd, 4th and 5th gears at low revs. This is, in my opinion, the main reason these engines wreck bearings and gearboxes. Most modern big singles won't cope long-term if their owners force them to do this, which means using the gearbox to keep the revs up as often as possible. >3500rpm is reasonable, 4000 in 5th. Obviously you can run any revs you want if the engine is lightly loaded.

So mate, rev it and be happy! I think our big singles are the least flexible engines around if we want them to last, but I don't care. I try to ride mine accordingly and hope it will be ok.

I absolutely thrashed my last Tenere (96 model) for 43,000km and it ran like a new one when I sold it. I haven't been as hard on this one because Australian coppers are now crazed about speed limits Except in the Northern Territory which has some unlimited roads and 130km/h elsewhere out of towns. Everywhere else is getting dismal because the authorities are running out of money, so the speed limits are more and more rigorously enforced

This is so true...
The last thing the XT likes is low revs in a to higher gear...
" Suzuki DR650 is the same & they blow 3rd gear apart real fast"
I have found lowering the gearing to 14/48 sprokets that goes along way to cureing the prob..and is only 500rpm more at 100kph in 5 gear.....
I feel my TTR250 is a far more flexable motor in that it dosn't complain
nearly as much if yer in the wrong gear/wrong revs...

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Harley Davidson..
The easyest way to turn gasoline into noise with out the side efect of horse power...

Almost reached the 100.000km mark, no problems so far.....engine still not opened, no oil consumption, still runnin' smooth and strong, good fuel consumption(1lt to 26km's on backroads, 1lt to 20km's on highways). Strong and reliable engines, these XT's!

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XT rules! Make the world beautiful, get a tattoo. Nick Curran R.I.P. '77-'12

XT660Z Tenere '08 http://dallastx.smugmug.com

visit: www.hank3.com

SRV: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU0MF8pwktg

I think with Tenere is like with buying Chinese product... if you lucky it will be as good as a decent brand overpaid product, but if you unlucky enough you will end up like me... And in reply to those lessons of riding big singles - i'm riding bikes for 21 years now, and amongst my bikes i had some of them : DR600, DR650, XT600, DRZ400, F650GS Dakar, and Tenere... Some of them for more then 3 years. None of them had such bad engine failure as Tenere despite being even over 10 years old.
Modern products are struggling for quality and reliability from simple reasons - constant reductions of production costs. Programs run in factories like CIP (continuous improvement process), VPS (value added production system) and similar are basically concentrating on earning more money for the company and spending less. Many times cheaper parts are fitted because of this. They won't fail every time, but will have higher fail rate... I just was unlucky enough to have a bike falling in this fail rate percentage. I wont present you with bar chart or pie chart showing fail rates, but one thing i know - 5 years old bike with 12000 miles on the clock shouldn't blow in to pieces doesn't matter how low revs you fancy riding. And i wasn't riding my bike with low revs, simply because to make this bike go you need to twist your wrist, lets face the true :-)
I wouldn't recommend Tenere to anybody now. Stories about 100 000 kilometers doesn't mean much for me when my bike is in bits in my garage.

There is such clever saying in my country - Fed person will never understand a hungry one. :-)

Fwiw, I think the gearing alteration would go a long way towards helping engine reliability. Also, it's true the 250 4-strokes don't seem to hammer their gearboxes, probably because they are all short (relatively) stroke engines, revving much harder than the bigger motors for a given speed, and their gears might be more lightly loaded anyway.

Bartosz, no doubt you're right. But I am wondering if perhaps your selector arm stopper bearing failed and caused the big mess? This really does seem to be an issue, and should not happen. Especially at your low mileage.

While what you have written is true, I still think that mainly this is a good engine. The selector stopper bearing is obviously something to watch for.

Also, it's possible for anyone to wreck anything. XR400s have a reputation for bullet-proof reliability here in Australia. A friend of mine has >100,000km on his bottom end, another has >60,000km without even a camchain being replaced, yet I have see one fool ruin his engine in about 8000km through brutal abuse. This is not a reflection on you at all, but maybe the previous owner of your bike.

Of course this doesn't help you one bit. I'm just trying put things in perspective. This fed person does understand a hungry one - I had a Ducati dissolve in about 10,000km, and a BMW R100GS which was so bad that the selling dealer wouldn't take it back for any money. Been there, mate, and didn't like it any more than you do now.

If it's any consolation I just completed a 9 day adventure ride with 4 ktm690's a drz400 a klr600 and my xtz660. Long story short, every day at least one bike had mechanical issues. The only bike which didn't break down was my tenere. In fact I towed one of the 690's for 20kms in bush roads. Would have been a great photo. Go the Yummiest!!!!

Flippin auto correct, that should've read.....Go the Yammies!!!!

Ahhh. Now that's bad news. Mr smart pants me has only been scraping the pennies for the last 30000km. Loads of stress in high gears at very low revs.