most of the older bikes ran well but you could not go 5000 miles and just change the oil. you hadda tighten this, adjust that, replace this all on a regular basis. if YOU did that your bike would run reasonably well, mine did. dare i say this.....in my early years i rode the shit outta my [cringe] hondas and they never broke down.
I started riding motorcycle on a mortally wounded 1974 Norton 850. That first summer I owned it, I'm not certain if I even was able to put a 1000 full miles on the bike, but it is the motorcycle that hooked me for life on this wonderful sport of motorcycle riding.
The motorcycles after that were Harley Davidson's, and one more Norton, because I had not learned my lesson from the first one. All of those bikes were maintenance demanding motorcycles. My free time was at a premium back in those days. I hated having to wrench and maintain my motorcycle on the one day I would get off from my job. While I'm certain that there were people who rolled more miles than I did, here in the state of Wisconsin, if you could put between five-and-ten thousand miles on your motorcycle in a season that was considered major riding. Now I routinely put 15000 miles on my Indian motorcycles, and I am still working full time. I definitely like the sport better now.
