Your guy is pretty much right about the fuelling - keep it the right gear with the revs up and the surging is not an issue. However, there are a lot of cheap and free fixes, all listed in the mods section here, that can address the problem and make the bike ride much more smoothly at lower throttle openings.

You should expect to get anywhere between 100 and 120 miles on a tenners worth of fuel on an XT. They return between 50 and 60 mpg generally, depending on how they are ridden.

These bikes are pretty reliable as long as maintain properly - regular oil changes, greasing of swingarm, linkage and head races etc. Other than the fuelling issue there aren't really any major issues with the XTX.

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