best quality brand?

[bluninja]

My experience for what it's worth...

Best quality machine I've had for me was a ZX9R C1. I rode the bike for my daily commute, scratched on it and did trackdays and long tours. It was ridden in sun, rain, snow, ice, freezing fog. No mechanical breakdowns, despite some poor maintenance by official garages (ram air disconected and airbox full of crap from the open hole), which I found when I serviced it myself at the end of 3 years. Found the paint on the tank was wearing through after 4 years where my gut leant against it all the time. The only problem I had was carb icing in very cold weather. It was pretty simple to work on and maintain. Bike was retired late 2001 after cosmetic damage ruled it an insurance writeoff.

I also have had a ZZR600, and a ZL600 and the engines all seemed bulletproof.

The SV650 has been reliable so far despite 3 slides, and is simple to work on apart from getting to the front carb. It handles well, and parts are cheap. Can't commetn on the finish as it's a bit scratched and dented.

The RSVR I have at the moment is only 21 months old, and has not seen much action, so can't comment, but I've had no breakdowns or gremlins yet.

TTFN

[750Y]

well thanks a lot guys & sorry if my original question wasn't well crafted or thought out but these answers are the stuff i'm really interested in. I'd have made up one of those voting tickboxes things but i'm not too fancy on the net stuff. bottom line is i want a superbike and i want to ride it everywhere all the time & i want it to go the distance without major quality related failure. I don't mind spending the money up front but i want to at least have some confidence in my decision.

[Sharkey]

Fair call on getting a bit pissed at the (my) smart alecy comment. I gues I was coming from the approach that most of the top marques are the tops for good reasons - price, build, servicability etc. As such, I do think how the bike feels is very significant. As an example, when I was buying my ZXR250, I was also looking at a CBR250 and the guy sellng it was saying that they do tend to be shorter (no problem for a person of my stature) than the ZXR's. Now given that these bikes are much of a muchness (no arguements please) the issue of length would become a serious problem of quality for a taller rider.

As such, whilst I appreciate that some of the comments might have been more what you were looking for, don't write off the others.

Most of all, have fun looking!

[SPman]

Originally posted by aff-man
Allthough i am not the most experienced rider around i do love looking up specs and have found a few sites that list a model of bike from 198-whatever through to today . It gives the problems experienced (mechanically) with the bike and as the model gets newer how they were  fixed. This would be an excellent time to give you the sites address but unfortunatley i forgot/didn't write it down, but with a bit of searching it could be found. happy hunting 

Is this the link. Look under Bikes - individual makers - a breif resume of most models from 1970-late 90's with general comments on faults etc.

http://www.custombike.org/main.htm

[MikeL]

That custombike site has lots of information but it deals mainly with the U.K scene so there are some omissions. It's also not clear what data the opinions are based on.