I cant watch the video right now, but on the subject of parts... i cant get some parts for my 2003 Vulcan Nomad. The bike has been in production for over 20 years, very minor changes. A neutral start switch is no longer made. lucky for me i was able to fix mine; however if the switch ever breaks the motorcycle will never be able to be safety inspected because it will fail.
1986 GMC; the square bodies are so popular i went to NAPA last summer to order new wheel cylinders and they had them in stock lol. actually i got a bunch of parts and the only one they had to order in was the oil pan gasket.
Yep those Nomads were like that. I worked at a kawasuki dealer from 1992 through 2020. In about 2006, a customer brought in a low-mile 2000 model VN1500 carb model, that suffered from a wire harness mishap of unknown origin. Harness was burned, and it was less expensive to replace than repair. Great, $320 as I remember, just order it and install it. Ordered just fine, 2 weeks later where's it at? Looked at the order, cancelled. Called Kawa-sucky, and asked--no longer available. A 6 year old motorcycle. Something about that particular harness only fit a few models and the manufacturer didn't sell very many, and by law they're only required to keep parts for 5 years (as all manufacturers as I understand). This bike had as I remember 880 miles on it; wasn't used much. Kinda sad really. He picked it up as it was, and then a week later asked me on a personal phone call if I'd like to buy it from him, and I did. It only took me a few months but I rebuilt the harness and got it going, and sold it for what I had in it. Made zero profit but I hated the 1500's and 1600's (and to an extent the 1700's as well) so much that I was NOT going to own/ride it.
Lastly in comparing bikes to cars, how many millions of cars are made? And to compare, there was a certain motorcycle that was kinda popular, that had a production number of 18,000 total units. So just by numbers alone, the market it much, much smaller-thus there is that much less reason to keep making parts for a machine that usually doesn't last very long anyway; in comparison to a car/truck that can run hundreds of thousands of miles and be easily repaired after a mild crash. You mildly crash a bike it's probably gonna total and go to bike heaven; and that assumes the rider even wants it after the fact. 84% of motorcycles don't make it to 20,000 miles. Know what the average mile life is on a sportbike? 4300 miles.
