Early SP

After months of indecision about replacement for rr9, I have decided against Panigale 899 due to reliability and cost of maintenance but SP (2014) now comes into budget, are they worth it as a pratical everyday road bike ? or should I save £3k and get a standard HRC and have the wheels sprayed gold and the bp sprayed white ? for the SP look.

 

When you say early what year of bike are you thinking about ?

 

Should have said 2014, just edited main post.

 

A friend had one Brad after quite a few standard Blades and loved it. Did a fair few miles as well plus track days.Try and get a test ride on one

 

Morning bradt,
Hope you mind me asking? But I’m looking at a panigale amongst others, what makes the duke so expensive maintenance wise? I’m told the service intervals are longer than the honda’s

Cheers

 

Hi Raphael.
I have been chatting to a few guys who own 899s most seem to like their bikes, but service costs seem very high in comparison to a blade, but my main concern is reliability and fears of a general breakdown, having done almost 15k miles on my blade, other than usual service costs , I have had to replace the battery, not sure the Pani will offer the same reliability
Mind you on looks alone could they worth the risk?

 

Worked with a guy who had a Pani and he shared the same view on the costs. Said it was expensive as the maintenance was very labour heavy. example being (I'm sure I will get corrected if wrong) changing the spark plugs, fairing and radiator needs to come off for access.

 

Thanks for that mate, doesn’t sound so bad, they had to drop the rad on my 05 blade to change the plugs so not so much different? The fairings are also a lot easier than the pain in the arse blades.
Cheers again mate

 

Brad, remember to pay particular attention to the ABS threads about that model. @Lozzy has surely filled you in.

 

No one I know has had issues with the sp abs for some reason. Worth researching though I guess!

 

Very interesting. Is it the same system as the basic Blade, does anyone know? (I'm not at all familiar with the 14 -16s)

 

Same as far as I know, probably 'blueprinted' the ABS parts too

 

Oops spoke too soon...found this by Gilesy on here!

Step away from the darkness Brad

It matters not that it's only happened at low speed because once that worms in your head it burrows away!

Plus I bet the bleed is the same long expensive process