I'm sorry, but I always find this kind of information extremely misleading.

There is NOWHERE near me that I can walk in to and buy NSR parts! Yes, I can order many OEM parts from (certain helpful) Honda dealers, which you should be able to do virtually anywhere in the world, but the vast majority of parts I buy I source from abroad.

Sorry Andy, but you're not in Australia are you? Chris (B Components - one of the bigger NSR parts suppliers here) in a later post states that some new parts are unavailable anymore. ******, another NSR parts supplier, has a recommendation against puchasing MC18's for that same reason, on their website. I can't get some new parts for my MC21, don't even ask me about my NS400R.

If you know where to look, you can usually find most bits - but it is not a straight forward exercise like walking into your local Honda dealer. To reiterate what I said in my post - many Australian Honda (and other manufactur's dealers) simply don't want to know about grey import bikes. There have been numerous tales of woe in local bike mags about people having this experience. If you live in Melbourne or Brisbane, then you may have an easier time, as the importers (for many grey import bikes) were located there. Other cities are not so lucky, and we have to rely on mail order.

It's simply a word of caution to a prospective purchaser - who may not be an enthusiast prepared to go to great lengths to obtain hard to get parts. Or have a bike off the road for a periods of time while sourcing parts from overseas. What impressions do you get from the original post?

I think it's a responsible statement.