Any bike needs TLC, and stings your wallet. 2 strokes need it more frequently in smaller amounts. 4 strokes appear to be able to cop a lot of abuse before something goes bang, and it does in a big way. At the end of the bike ownsership, I would guess it comes out roughly even.
Both 2 and 4 strokes are reliable if they are well maintained (Andy is alluding to that in his posts). The major difference is that a stroker requires more frequent maintainance but costs less to perform this maintenance.
So if you like the sound, smell and performance of a stroker, and you're willing to pay for the servicing since you don't have the space to do it, get one
If you want to just buy a bike, not worry about it, and pay someone else to do oil changes and everything else......get a 4 stroker.
PortableFishy wrote:So I stopped by a bike shop in Sumida-ku and they had like 10+ NSR250R's around, with about 3 or 4 of them in really good condition, somewhere between 5000 - 7500 km on the bikes. I'm getting pretty interested in one of these but not sure now that you mention its not that much of a reliable bike.
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Also, reliability is also pretty important for me since we don't have a lot of garages or areas to work on a bike in Tokyo since space is very limited here. I've always liked the NSRs and there doesn't seem to be many new bike options (except maybe a Kawasaki Ninja 250r, but those will cost about 10,000 USD to get around here, 5000 for the bike, 5000 for all the registration and stuff for a new bike).
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Thanks,
Maru