Wow - cost of dirt bike compared to a street bike | GTAMotorcycle.com

Wow - cost of dirt bike compared to a street bike

T

Trackday

Well-known member
Wow-what is it with “Competition” dirt bikes the average cost of 250 and 450 is $10K. For $10K you get a front brake, a back break and small single-cylinder engine and that’s it. On some models, you get a front light and backlight, but these are very basic. But for a street bike, you get high tech machinery with high tech engines and the legal requirements to run these on the roads. Could it be the volume of scale? They sell many more street bikes than dirk bikes. For comparison, I have added some prices lifted from Yamaha’s web site.

Yamaha

MT-09 $10K
MT-07 $8.7K
YZF-R3 $6K
MT-03 $5.8K

WR450 $11K
YZ450FX $10K
YZ450F $10K
WR250F $10K
 
Trackday said:
Wow-what is it with “Competition” dirt bikes the average cost of 250 and 450 is $10K. For $10K you get a front brake, a back break and small single-cylinder engine and that’s it. On some models, you get a front light and backlight, but these are very basic. But for a street bike, you get high tech machinery with high tech engines and the legal requirements to run these on the roads. Could it be the volume of scale? They sell many more street bikes than dirk bikes. For comparison, I have added some prices lifted from Yamaha’s web site.

Yamaha

MT-09 $10K
MT-07 $8.7K
YZF-R3 $6K
MT-03 $5.8K

WR450 $11K
YZ450FX $10K
YZ450F $10K
WR250F $10K
Click to expand...
My suspicion is some of it will be related to economics (they know most people will pay 10K for a toy), part of it is volume and part of it is quality of parts.

To use a house analogy, most street bikes are builder grade. They have all of the required parts but the cheapest version that can get the job done during the warranty period. Occasionally you can pay to upgrade to better looking components but normally performance is still marginal. Sure, there will be something to catch your eye (hp in a bike, stone veneer in a house) but everything else will have been cost cut. If you want to get a good product, you need to find one of the few builders that cares and actually puts in quality components. Compare a competition-ready dirt bike vs a competition-ready street bike and I suspect you will find a large price gap.
 
Light wight motorcycles that don't break easy and feature world class components, cost a lot more to build. Trials bikes are ~10k and for that you can pick it up and throw it down a rock covered hill, go pick it up and ride it more.
 
With dirt bikes, you can have it go end-over-end land upside down, in the mud. Kick it over, pick it up and it will start every time. With a street bike if falls over on the kickstand and it's a $1000 in damage. But some of these street bikes have engines that will need little maintenance put out big power and will last for years. While our dirt bike engines have a defined life that needs to rebuild after a short time. The price for high power in a small package. But, with street bikes, the moment you take it to the track, get it up to speed you find out how the suspension can not keep up. If you want to go faster, you are going to be spending some money to make some changes. While with the dirt bikes it from the showroom to the race track.
 
and they ride awesome.
Wish somebody would hurry up and get here, I want to ride now.
 
Trackday said:
Wow-what is it with “Competition” dirt bikes the average cost of 250 and 450 is $10K. For $10K you get a front brake, a back break and small single-cylinder engine and that’s it. On some models, you get a front light and backlight, but these are very basic. But for a street bike, you get high tech machinery with high tech engines and the legal requirements to run these on the roads.
Click to expand...

Actually the street bikes engines are less high-tech and tuned than competition dirt bike engines.

You only need to look at the CRF250L (which you didn't mention on your list), MSRP at $5999.

The CRF250L bike takes its engine from the street-bike CBR250R and is nowhere near as tuned as a competition-focused dirt bike engine. For the CRF250L, Honda didn't care about extracting max hp, lowering weight, utilizing bottom-shelf suspension components, etc.

This reveals what dressing up a street-bike with dirt-bike fairings really costs... about half the price of a real competition dirt bike.
 
The street bikes on your list (1) are built in relatively large volume, as motorcycle sales volumes go, and (2) have bottom-of-the-barrel suspension and brake parts and are specifically designed to be cheap to build.

While street bikes have fancy things like fuel injection and ABS nowadays, the electronics to make those work are cheap in this day and age. ABS control modules are reasonably standardised between bikes, no one cares what they look like and they all perform the same functions so that the same basic hardware can be built in the biggest possible production volume. Fuel injection hardware is like that, too ... fuel pumps are all basically the same, injectors are all basically the same with different nozzles to suit engine size, all the switches and sensors are cookie cutter.

Big production volume -> lower per-unit price ...
 
Would be interesting to see Yamaha Canada’s sales numbers this year for street vs dirt. I think dirt is closer to street.

Used dirt prices are crazy this year. Almost no depreciation.
 
Trackday said:
With dirt bikes, you can have it go end-over-end land upside down, in the mud. Kick it over, pick it up and it will start every time. With a street bike if falls over on the kickstand and it's a $1000 in damage. But some of these street bikes have engines that will need little maintenance put out big power and will last for years. While our dirt bike engines have a defined life that needs to rebuild after a short time. The price for high power in a small package. But, with street bikes, the moment you take it to the track, get it up to speed you find out how the suspension can not keep up. If you want to go faster, you are going to be spending some money to make some changes. While with the dirt bikes it from the showroom to the race track.
Click to expand...
Had a $2500 heavyweight cruiser do that on the street.
Crushed one peg to half it's size and cracked the tach.
Other than that it was fine. Cost me $100 to fix it.
 
saw the ktm dirtbikes up stairs at gpbikes. beautiful bikes. thought it would be cool to have a dirtbike as a second bike. then I saw the sticker prices. wtf!
 
justride said:
saw the ktm dirtbikes up stairs at gpbikes. beautiful bikes. thought it would be cool to have a dirtbike as a second bike. then I saw the sticker prices. wtf!
Click to expand...
buy slightly used from a flatlander, you will save thousands and get a bike that has not been ridden hard.
KTM only makes go fast dirt bikes at the moment, there are more dirt bikes then just go fast dirt bikes, there are go anywhere dirt bikes. Same rules apply for buying used go anywhere dirt bikes.
 
Trackday said:
Wow-what is it with “Competition” dirt bikes the average cost of 250 and 450 is $10K. For $10K you get a front brake, a back break and small single-cylinder engine and that’s it. On some models, you get a front light and backlight, but these are very basic. But for a street bike, you get high tech machinery with high tech engines and the legal requirements to run these on the roads. Could it be the volume of scale? They sell many more street bikes than dirk bikes. For comparison, I have added some prices lifted from Yamaha’s web site.

Yamaha

MT-09 $10K
MT-07 $8.7K
YZF-R3 $6K
MT-03 $5.8K

WR450 $11K
YZ450FX $10K
YZ450F $10K
WR250F $10K
Click to expand...

You're comparing apples to oranges. The key word is competition, and all the technology that goes with it. A better comparison would be:

Competition model: WR250F $10K
Street model: XT250 $5.5K

Or:

Competition model: R1M $28K
Street model: MT-10 $16K
 
Let's look at a ZX-6R and a KX450, between the two it is a $2K difference. Both "can" be taken to the track from the showroom. To make both go "faster" on the track money would need to be spent. But, let's put that aside. What does $2K buy you? In the case of the ZX-6R may be better value for the money? You are just getting more bike that can be pushed very hard, likewise with the KX450 you're getting a bike in the right hands can do the triple right out of the gate. The main point here is that a competition dirt bike is very expensive. You are paying a lot of money for a very minimal bike.
 
Light motorcycles are expensive :LOL: I just worked it out and my new bike is going to cost about 80$ per pound.
 
Trials said:
Light motorcycles are expensive :LOL: I just worked it out and my new bike is going to cost about 80$ per pound.
Click to expand...
What did you get? If you think motorcycles are expensive per pound dont look at bicycles. You can go up almost an order of magnitude from your price/lb.
 
TRS makes a bicycle too

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