MZ bearing quality..

[95SaxonTour]

I've just done the headset bearings on the zed this evening. It occured to me that in less than 35k km I've now replaced all wheel bearings and now the steering bearings. The oil-in-frame design and the resulting heat at the head tube toasted those bearings, thats for sure. But I've owned many bikes (all Japanese) and have got more than 40k MILES out them before it was time to toss the them. What gives quality of with the zed bearings? I wonder why they didn't use sealed ones on the headset from the start.

[DAVID THOMPSON]

most people do not put large amounts of miles on a bike
i was taking a school class on a jap bike and they said that bikes under 350 cc seldom
were rode past 20,000 to 30,000 miles before being wrecked or abused to the point they were not worth repair...
this was in 1979
i was riding a BMW R50S at the time and all the fellows were shocked that it had 165,000 miles on it.
and was about 18 years old
its in the basement now with over 200,000 ready to overhaul i repacked the wheel bearing last week
i do think there original

but the rt125 has 20,000 on it and has 10,000 on the second set of wheel bearings

how often do you hear of a 20,000 mile 125cc street bikes

i have warned about the cooked steering bearings in the past i have a 500cc saxon tour
i saw a BMW K75 in the mid 80's it was 18 months old and had 66,000 miles on it

now thats a used bike
dave
most models are built to a price based on how they will be used and how long they will be used..

the old bmw bikes were built to last a life time
and hit there peak from 1970 to 1995 when they dropped the k75 from the line up
the only daily driver built after 1995 was the MZ RT125
most every thing after 1995 is rich boy's toys or junk
my soap box is now back in storage