the harley will never last as long whith less problems than your vtx. just the way it is. its like compairing your ford torus to a honda civic. wich will last longer. no brainer.

 

A friend of mine rolled over the 100K mark on his bike this year. Here is what he said he did during that time period:

"I've had the cam tensioners replaced twice and the cam bearings changed once. Other than regular mtce and changing my synthetic oil at 5K intervals, that's about it. I had the fork oil changed at 80K and do an annual 20K mtce.
My extended warranty goes by time and not miles. I have until September 2010 until the extended warranty is off so I'm in no hurry to replace the bike. One of the guys at the Lakeville H-D has over 200K on his bike but he has done some serious work on the engine and had it built up to a 96ci. He makes the point that as long as the bikes look alike from year to year and the features don't change, it's much cheaper to do an overhaul than it is to buy a new bike. I don't recall ever being left behind due to my 88ci engine. Bigger engines mean less shifting and not necessarily more speed."

Your bike is a 2003, so you need to pay attention to the cam tensioners... they need to be replaced every 30-50K or you can do some serious damage. 2007 and up have hydraulic tensioners and will probably last 100k. When you have the tensioners changed, I think you can replace them with hydraulic or some folks go to gear driven.

 

I'd shop around for a extended warranty. You can get some pretty cheap to protect you against major repairs. I bought a three year extended warranty. A month after the factory warranty expired, I had to replace the inner primary bearing. Later on, a fairing bracket broke. Out of pocket cost for warranty $1100. $50 co-pay each time I used the extended warranty. So far, $534 (over and above the co-pay) worth of work in the first two months of the extended warranty.

Incidentally, my Ultra gets the premium service at each recommended interval from a three year pre-paid maintenance plan.

 

Other than removing my cam chain tensioners, and replacing the cams to Gear driven, other than normal fluid changes, I've had no major problems on my 01 wide glide in 75K+ miles.

 

I don't think the cam tensioner problem is as common as many think.

Some of the guys I know with early model TC's have very high mileage bikes, and have never done anything to them except normal routine maintenance.

 

I have 40k in 2 years on mine and i would expect 100k at least...People keep talking about metric this and metric that but you know...The only metric pikes i have seen with that kind of high mileage has been goldwings...I have owned 5 metrics before i went to HD and they all had some issues at low miles...PLUS...I didn't want to ride them as much as i want to ride my HD. Very ralery see a guy with a V-Star or a SHadow or a Vulcan pull up and say ...Hey bud i have 100k on my bike and it's never had any issues....Mu buddy has a 04 GL1800 with 165k and he has had several thing to break but hey it's 165k...Another guy i know has 120k on a 02 Road glide.. had a few issues... It's like a car...the better you take care of it and fix chit when you notice it going bad the better life expectancy you will get out of it. Whit that said...ride it like you stoll it.

 

My jap cruiser was FAR more problematic than both my harley's combined. And in far fewer miles. H-D has been supremely reliable in my experience.

I routinely log 30k a year and they have never failed me. The Yamaha was on a tow truck 3 different times in 36k miles. Both H-D's combined had about 120k on them and neither ever broke down or gave me any trouble. Just routine maintenance.

 

I'm going to say you won't get as many miles as you think. Reason being, you'll end up trading it in for another HD long before it is ready to be put out to pasture. Trust me

 

I sure hope they "inspected" their tensioners during that "normal routine maintenace",....... Because they are at extreme risk after 25k miles. Many check good at that point, but I have seen many that were worn to the point that they were lucky to have checked. Checking the tensioners is a MUST do, if you wanna lower your risk for catastrophic failure. No later than 25k miles. No joke.






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Harley has improved a lot over the last 20-30 years. Today they have modern equipment in the factories and quality is on par with others.

Reality is that most bikes will die from neglect or abuse long before they wear out.
Don't rev it up like a sport bike, or dog it along, keep up on maintenance it should last a long time.