Bike age and reliability.

As I sit here without a running motorcycle this spring, I am contemplating the problems of riding a "classic" bike.   I ride a fully restored 1983 Yamaha Venture, at the end of last years riding season, I noticed a lower charging voltage, so I decided to repair and upgrade the system to something more modern to increase reliability.   Well, older bikes don't have parts available.  I had to have a custom Stator wound to replace my stator, and I have to do custom wiring to use a FJR1300's regulator.  This is an upgrade to modern parts, but it turns the bike into something that no mechanic will touch.   Although just being old, most dealership mechanics will not touch the bike simply because the kids they hire don't have any real troubleshooting skills for older bikes.   One local bike shop freaked out about the quad liked carbs telling me how it's impossible to synchronize them.....  In reality it's easy and takes less than 5 minutes.

So riding an old bike means if you break down on the road, you are stuck.  Dealerships wont touch the bike, nor can you trust them to have competent mechanics that can work on older  hardware.  Newer bikes have step by step repair books that make it easy for them to repair.  Dealerships like this as they can hire less skilled kids for the shop and still charge the $198 am hour.  Being stranded 500 miles from home and knowing that I can not get my bike fixed without renting a uhaul and driving it home is becoming a problem for me.   My dream long distance trip is to ride Route 66 out west and back again.  Having a bike that at least can get repaired on the road would ease some of my concerns.

I still love my bike, and there is nothing out there that can replace it.   I really dont like the Sportbike touring bikes as they all look like they are uncomfortable for the passenger.  I dont like the Harley style, and the goldwing is honestly a utterly huge bike that looks like 1/2 of a Honda civic and a price take higher than a civic, plus it has the "I am an old fart" connection to it.  I don't need the surround sound DVD player navigation with intercom.  I have Bluetooth for that.  I guess I am stuck with looking at the BMW 1200LT as my only choice.  I just dont like the recent reviews that point to BMW having bad reliability with a very high cost of repair on the last few years.