How Much?
July 13, 2015I read another blog this morning by someone with a much larger readership than mine. He was praising his scooter because the odometer had just turned 28,000 miles. It seems that the owners of this particular brand of scooter regards 30,000 miles as the Holy Grail of mileage. My question is....”REALLY?”
I just looked at my calendar and it confirmed that it's the year 2015. In 1955, sixty years ago, reaching 10,000 miles was an achievement as the metal and electrical parts would wear out fairly regularly. My own Father had a Triumph motorcycle of 1961 vintage. At the time he was a dealer and mechanic and seeing what wore out on his customer's bikes he made it a point to do maintenance on those items regularly. By 1967, when he sold it, the bike had 61,000 miles and only one valve job and piston ring replacement. Notice that mileage was attained back in the relative Dark Ages of motorcycles fifty years ago. In those days automobiles rarely reached 100,000 miles with about 75,000 usually being the Junk Yard point.
The particular scooter brand in question has an “Out the Door” price exceeding $8,000. Call me a Pest but I would expect to reach 100,000 miles with ease on something costing that much. I don't know if my very Cheap Chinese machines will ever reach 100,000 miles but I expect to reach the low mileage of 30,000 miles with only scheduled maintenance and I paid considerably less than $8000 for a scooter with the same size engine.
Of course I didn't buy my scooter from a shop supplying Espresso and Opera music to its customers which must contribute to their operating cost and be tacked onto their scooters price tags. In the year 2015 everything on two wheels should roll over high mileages though. Even the most expensive Image Enhancing machines.
Posted by Jim Zeiser.
If you wish to comment my e-mail address is h1500e@hotmail.com. I'd like to hear anything-good or bad-that anyone would like to say. As they said in college, we're all lifelong learners.
