High-mileage bikes are a common sight here on our side of the globe. You have thousands of motorcycle-taxis and courier riders plying our roads daily, and those bikes basically go on non-stop week in and week out. You also have the avid big-bikers who go on long rides every chance they get—these rack up the kilometers even quicker, especially since they can get on the expressways.
But even so, you don’t always get to see bikes hit the triple-digit mark on their odometers. If and when they do, they’ll most likely be around the 100,000-200,000km range, and only the hardcore riders get to reach that point.
And then there’s this guy: Roy Chung and his 1999 Suzuki Hayabusa. His ’Busa has racked up 401,574km at the time Chung posted on the Facebook group Mileage Impossible. That’s where we saw his post, and it’s the same group that brought us this high-mileage Honda Jazz from a while back.
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The GSX1300R, as it is formally known, is widely considered a superbike—and superbikes aren’t the kind you use daily. Racking up that amount of kilometers on a single bike alone is impressive stuff—but on a Hayabusa? That’s insane.
We reached out to the guy for more info, and he shared that he isn’t the first owner of the bike. He got it from a friend between 2006-2007 with 190,000km, if his memory serves him right. That’s already high to start with, but it also just goes to show the Suzuki’s sheer longevity considering how many more kilometers Chung has added since.
He shares that he “rides a bit more than others,” but also said that over the years, some of his friends have also ridden the bike when they needed it, so the kilometers weren’t all his. Chung used to live south of Seoul, South Korea, where he mainly rode the ’Busa. His usual trips were in the rural areas, as he had always lived on the outskirts of the city. He said it’s the 777 route around Korea—a 2,400km loop around the country—where he’s put in most of his kilometers.
The body fairings are no longer original, and the exhaust manifold was replaced once due to a broken weld. But Chung shared how he’s been proactive with maintenance, specifically the cam chain and cam-chain tensioner replacements. His Hayabusa is now on its fourth cam chain and third CCT. The water pump has failed once, but has since been going strong. The fuel pump, meanwhile, was replaced before he got the bike. “I thankfully have not had the dreaded subframe failure, yet,” he added. “Knocking on wood.”
For the most part, the engine is original, with the majority of its ‘non-consumable’ parts intact. It doesn’t eat up much oil, but it needs a top-up every 800-1,000km. Currently, the bike isn’t being used as the triple tree is failing to stay in place and needs replacement. Chung says it has never been touched or maintained, so that’s fair for an old bike.
Chung’s original post read: “She may not be shiny and new, but at least she’s on her original engine and parts.” That’s as big of a flex as you can make with a 400,000km+ bike.
