Pressurized said:
My 1200's warranty expires in November. I'm thinking exactly along your lines - that the bike, though brilliant to ride, will be a nightmare when I have to pay for it to be fixed.
I love the Adventure concept and am thinking about a KTM 990 Adventure - you went for mental litre sportsbikes - why?
There's normally lots of reasons why people change bikes. I had a change of circumstance which meant commuting on the thing was not an option (secure parking taken away on office move). This meant that I needed a disposable bike that can sit outside in all weathers, cost little to run and I wouldn't mind if it got nicked. For that I chose a commuta-scoot - 125cc bum basic, actually very good for commuting - I save over £600 in fuel a year compared to the GS.
Also co-incident with this change was me starting a familily - just got a little fella 2 months old. This meant that I didn't have the time to spend going on long tours that justify such a bike - I was left with 1/2day blasts round the local roads with the outside possibility of the odd weekend. Now I've always fancied a completely nutty bike having only owned "sensible" bikes to date (Bandit, Fazer, CBR600, GS). So decided to own a gixxer for a few years.
Now what I'll go for next, who knows, maybe back to the GS, maybe a supermoto, maybe a trials bike????? Life's too short to stick to one formula - if I was rich enough I'd have one of every type of bike.
The final thing was reliability. From that point of view it was S-H-I-T-E.......there can be no debate on that subject. For me, this was the only negative for my ownership of the GS. If it'd been more reliable I'd have probably run it another year and sold with 40k on the clock.
So there are my decisions for changing from the GS.
As for life on the litre sportsbike - its been interesting so far. Speeds are difficult to control - that's a definite. I'm only running in at the moment and it is truly ballistic - there's torque everywhere in the rev range (lacking on a lot of litre bikes, but present on the Suzuki due to long stroke). Riding position is also very good, doing a tankful (150miles) on one sitting is no bother. Brakes - on reflection, nice to get rid of the servos. Handling is superb, none of this front biased crap you get with a lot of sportsbikes, its nice and neutral like the GS - means you can go in with bags of confidence. Overtakes are great, unlike the GS its instant torque no matter the gear and no risk of bashing the rev limiter requiring a change mid manouvre.
The downsides are speed (hard to control), riding position (good, not as good as gs), power/torque (you need to modulate, no handfuls on exits from corner), lack of luggage space (although you get a nice bit under the rear hump + I've put on a baglux), turning radius (get in a carpark and it feels like its got the turning radius of the QE2).
All in all an entertaining experience which challenges the rider - just what I was after for my short(er) fixes of biking I'm going to get over the next couple of years.
Still considering populating my garage with an 1100GS................
. Thats a lot of money toward any repairs. 
