How long have you been riding?
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When you figure what they cost (new anyway), how long they last before needing replaced (usually a lot less than cars), the high insurance on many of them, the frequent dealer maintenance required (plus chain cleaner and lube), the short tire life, the bike bling that many people buy (slip-ons, hard cases, etc.), all the other accessories and clothing that everyone needs to buy.
They ain’t that cheap…
in which I only paid $600 or so. Frankly, I think it was because of a clean driving record. My car insurance was double that for the year(The neighborhood I live in doesn’t help, at all). My car cost around $15,000.(excluding APR). My bike was only around $4000 out the door($4400 including gear) As much as the car is driven, $60 to $70 is a fair number to throw out there for weekly fuel expenses. If I rode as much as the car was driven, I still cannot see coming close to spending that much on the bike vs. the car. As for services, I have yet to find out the comparison between bike vs. car. However, with those numbers I’ve mentioned I could have had 3 of my bikes for the price of 1 car. I think if specific cars were compared to specific bikes, some bikes may be more expensive to own(like a touring Harley for example which cost about as much as a car anyway). But if we are generalizing cars vs. bikes, a bike is the cheaper way to go. But hey, any form of transportation other than public is never cheap.
HE WHO DIES WITH THE MOST TOYS WINS
wish i could but between work, football practices and games and just doing other stuff not a lot of time has been left for riding unfortunately.
they gave pretty crappy mpg’s all across the board, so I’m not really paying attention to that part. I’m more interested in actual people’s reviews than a magazine or e-zine anyway.
It’ll likely be in berkley/sf/east bay area where i get my bike. I don’t trust my skills enough to make a trek down to so cal and ride it bak up.hmmm if I had access to a trailer to haul a bike…..
I pay about $20 a week for my jeep, but I only really drive durring the weekends. my cargo van averages about $40 a day, but I can’t swap that out for a motorcycle, much as I’d like to. I figure it takes about $160 to fill my gas tank at current gas prices…in the van
that was one of the first things I learned, but by then I was already caught.
as far as cheaper or not…compared to a civic…no, but compared to a 13yr old Jeep Wrangler thats running out of things to replace….we’ll see
you know I saw a comparison on car vs bike, and it was TOTALLY skewed. they compared, if I recall correctly, a brand new high end touring bike with a civic. the author further assumed either A) your car was still being paid for and added that to the cost of buying a bike “because you can’t save money by spending more money on another vehicle if you’re still paying off the vehicle you’re trying to replace” which technically makes sense, but I personally don’t think that other vehicles should be factored into the bike cost. then they factored the $18grand for the touring bike vs the $12 or so grand a civic costs (or whatever they cost…) then factor in the touring bike’s average 40ish mpg vs a civic’s 35ish and clearly the savings are minimal at best.
which I felt was comparing apples to garden gnomes. you pick one of the most expensive, heaviest, and worst gas milage bikes on the road, and compare it to one of the cheapest, smallest, most fuel efficient cars on the road. why not compare it to a humvee? if you used that one, chances are, even a touring bike’ll be cheaper to run. if you want to work the civic angle, how bout a V-Star 250? 80? 90mpg? $3500? add a grand (the comparison added like $2500 because he only wears “the absolute top of the line” gear) for the gear, and you’re still buying a new V-Star 250 for what would be a good price on a gently used civic. there’s a lot of tire changes and tune ups before you catch up with the civic. I think he also threw in the whole upgrading the bike in a couple months thing…because you know it’s a requirement to move up from a touring motorcycle to…what? an OCC custom chopper? that bike thats powered by a helicopter turbine?
it seems the general concept that in the long haul it’s not that much cheaper, and it ends up being more expensive due to our general inability to ride a bike like we drive a car, point A to point B no frills commuting.
me, my cage is a 95 jeep wrangler, gets around 15-17mpg. has been paid off for years, and has a growing number of repair costs vs a V-Star 250 that’ll cost $4000ish out the door, add another $700 for gear (i can get cheaper, but who cares) so it’ll still be cheaper than trading in my jeep for a new cage. but hey if we want to talk bike cost itself, I paid $17k for the jeep 10 years ago.and I’ll get a conservative 70mpg on the V-Star, or go with a hyosung gv 250 and get a comfortable 60mpg still leaps and bounds better than my jeep even in it’s hayday. AND it’ll be more fun (though the jeep IS fun, don’t get me wrong)
well you gotta get here first.
so when you getting here? group rides are fun.
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If there’s anything more important than my ego
around, I want it caught and shot now…I was kind of hoping that there could be a thread where someone could look and find out about the folks answering questions. I have been as guilty as the next guy of going off topic and don’t claim to be holier than thou. But maybe we can either re do this post somewhere with the information, or say on topic? Just an idea. I’m as in favor of free speech as anyone else here. But the thread, while fun, has wandered.
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