Advice on Buells

[ELCOOKARITO]

I've been looking at older Buells lately & spotted a couple of well priced 2000 X1's on Trademe. There a nice bike & I like the concept & look of them. Has anyone out there had any experience with long-term ownership of an x1 lightning? Are the horror stories of unreliability true? & what sort of stuff should I be looking out for? Any help would be much appreciated!

[Crasherfromwayback]

X1's are fine mate. Most of the (small) issues they had were all sorted under warranty recall. Check the belt for stone damage, and the front disc for wear/warpage. Don't pay anymore than 5-6 k for a good one though...that's all they're worth now.

Pete

[nallac]

Absolutely love my X1,have only had it for 6 months but will have it for a loooooooong time.

As crasher has said, check belt(really just a consumable like a chain only more expensive) ,front disc.
Also the Iso's ,top engine one(mines split, waiting for a replacement) and the two rears.
Theres an updated oil pump geardrive out as well pays to check and/or change(from what i've read).

Check here for the good the bad and the ugly of Buell ownership. http://www.badweatherbikers.com/cgib....cgi?pg=topics

buellbabe should be along soon.has had hers for a while now...and done a shetload of kays.

It'd pay to get the one with the most a/market mods like zorst,intake,shock etc if ya can.It will you save money in the long term.
No need to have a race ECM either as the stock one can be flashed with the race map with ECM spy,its worth is weight in gold
for tuning and checking for faults.

[buellbabe]

Nallac, thanks for pointing me to this thread, I have been away on holiday in sunny San Francisco and so have been offline for a bit!

Horror stories???Someones been telling you porkies mate... All the X1 owners I know love their bikes…they are the top of the tuber range with horsepower equal to the later XB range and torque for Africa. In fact AJ and I were talking just last night about why we love our older Buells and its cos they are such fun to ride but mostly cos the power is where ya want its, useable to the max!

Belt/disc/iso mounts/oil pump drive...hey as far as I am concerned those things are all just part of general wear n tear.

My X1 has been an extremely reliable bike and has never had anything go wrong with it that wasn't just part of getting old and being ridden a LOT...
One of the best pieces of advice given to me when i bought the X1 10+ yrs ago was to be vigilant with servicing.I HAVE BEEN, I have followed the servicing schedule to the letter and I reckon thats part of the reason why I have such a primo bike.

I agree with changing the basics of exhaust can, airfilter, better rotor(I've got wave discs front and rear and they are superior plus they look pretty!)...Dunno about changing the shock, if it ain't broke then there is no need to, mine leaked at about 25k so i had it stripped and rebuilt (cheapas chips!) and it was good for another 80k after that) then I had it 2 up and we had a HUGE bottom out that broke the shaft so I have had it rebuilt again (once again, not a huge cost) and I expect to get another 80k out of it...so really that ain't bad for a bike that gets ridden almost every day...

Personally I find the badweatherbikers site a bit anal. Check out this one...

http://aussievtwins.com/index