Walter; I've seen photos of KTM's (950's and 990's) with rims as you showed earlier in the thread.... it's not only BMW who is using butter rims. Ok, the KTM will take more punishment than an BMW but they are not that good...



Casper

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Oh I agree ... totally. You can find plenty of threads of me criticising KTM for dumbing down their Adventure bikes ... That they used to put their best quality forks and rims on them, and now they put their cheapest forks and rims on them. Having said that, it still seems the cheapest WP forks are a long way better than BMWs cheapest tho. Rims? I think both 990 rims and F800 rims come from Behr ... not sure if there is any difference in spec. KTM also go too far when it comes to saving money on outsourced components (rims, fuel pumps etc), but it seems not always quite to the extreme level BMW do.

If you get a 990, its one of things you need to change before you go offroading. Again, its something that someone who buys a 990 and wants to ride to Magadan should be aware of. My reference to the 990 earlier in the thread was more regarding suspension than rims.

A friend of mine, Joe Pichler (http://www.josef-pichler.at/), does a lot of marketing rides for KTM on the adventure side ... rides across Africa, Siberia and South America for promotional and marketing pics ... has been using 950s and 990 from 2003 till 2011 ... and the main change (and first change) KTM marketing guys made to his bikes before each trip was the rims - changing to either the DID dirtstar rims or any Excel rims.

See also:

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ehr-rims-22519

and my post on the same topic on another forum:

ADVrider - View Single Post - Sibirsky Extreme 2012 - The Toughest Ride of Them All

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Thats becuase more and more companys are being run by accountants where they will try to save every last penny to make themselves look better

I'll be bolting these together when they finally come into our place...

I really do hope they're impressive.

As a historic BMW hater, my new job has opened my eyes up to many things.

They're not as bad as I thought. They're actually really good enjoyable bikes.

Would I take one travelling though.............

NOPE !!!!!
.

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As will i

I have always thought they are fun bikes to ride, not tried them for anything more then a test ride though.

I bet I scratch a screen with my T25 before you do !!

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Did some trips.
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Joe Dakar (official BMW off road instructor, BMW tour guide and BMW tour guide instructor), is doing the BMW Launch project for the 800 Adventure ... A ride to Magadan ...

The project - JOEDAKAR - MOTORCYCLE ADVENTURE, MEDIA & MORE...



I just spoke to him yesterday about the rims to warn him.

He told me that BMW marketing had already changed the rims to proper ones !

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Does this mean that we will only receive a highly sensored marketing version on how it fairs ???



www.touringted.com

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Did some trips.
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Can't say anymore.

Joe is a marketing professional ... He has done marketing for Wunderlich and Touratech before and is now associated with BMW ... so there will be some censorship obviously - its his career. But he is blogging it live, so there is a limit to how much you can censor. You cant edit out major problems live ... only minor ones.

If he goes quiet for a week and then restarts in the same place, then you can be pretty damn sure some large details have been left out.

But from all I have seen of the 800GS, having helped a number of people take them to pretty rough places, is that the bike itself is suprisingly tough. Its durable. Its got a pretty bulletproof frame and engine. I have no doubt that the bike will make it. I also have no doubt Joe would rather do it on his X-Challenge, as indeed he was planning to do last year - lead a tour to Magadan all on X-Challenges. I guess when this bike popped onto BMWs radar, they all decided it was best he does the trip in 2013, on the new bike, and not as a public tour.

The five issues that seem to come up a lot with the F800 are (1) its much too heavy for what it is (2) the suspension is poor (3) the wheels are crap (4) many people want more fuel (5) the seat is not comfortable

The Adventure version addresses the last 2 of those 5 issues. Its better than nothing, but it would have been very easy to fix the suspension and rims while they were at it. And score 4 out of 5 for effort.

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I still remember when I realised how extreme it was ... the day I learned that BMW paid the suppliers of the 1200GS rear shock 27 EUR a piece at OEM supply level, - the same shock that if you buy from a parts counter will cost you about 900, thats when I realised how much they save on these components. Thats when I realised for another 27 EUR you could have had a shock that was TWICE as good. Or as mentioned earlier, for an extra 20-30 EUR you could have had two Excel rims on your F800GS instead of those horrible Behr rims.

But really, can you blame the companies? They are only just reacting to public demand. Its the public that demand bikes be as cheap as possible. For adventure bikes especially, I would prefer they were as good as possible rather than as cheap as possible - but I am in a minority. It goes back to the fact that 95% of adventure bike buyers arent going anywhere except up and down motorways and daily commutes. Those buyers dont want to pay extra for good rims or suspension because they dont need it. And the manufacturers cant make all this stuff optional, it would be too expensive. Its either in or its out of the standard spec. 95% of buyers want it out. As I pointed out earlier in the thread, it took KTM a while to figure that out - but they are heading there too now.

The market gets what it deserves.

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The five issues that seem to come up a lot with the F800 are (1) its much too heavy for what it is (2) the suspension is poor (3) the wheels are crap (4) many people want more fuel (5) the seat is not comfortable

I'm just an 800GS pillion but here's my 2 cents. 1.The bike is heavy for what it is and tall. It'll roll over anything but if you are loaded going up a steep dirt track & hit rocks...you might end up taking a dirt nap unless you are super tall & long legged. 2. Can't complain about the suspension. I'm a big girl and we have gone airborne & landed HARD in Kyrgyzstan. We've done lots of gravel, rocks & dirt, bad road & off road and the stock suspension is still going strong. Can't say the same about some of the bikes we've crossed with that had after market suspension. That's a sucky problem to have on a fun road. 3 we have a dent in the front wheel rim but it hasn't affected the tire. That rubber band on the inside of the back tire just disintegrated though. We have also levered the tires off many times & managed to not damage the rims. That said Siberia would probably do them in 4. The tank is small but on a long stretch if you ride conservatively it's fine. We never ran out, even on the 420km stretch in Kazakhstan between stations.(we did carry extra though that we did not use) but that's a major complaint about this bike so lots of people will rejoice. 5. The seat. Ok from me the pillion: it's a plank of wood. This is something I will say hooray that they are paying attention to. If you are going to make a RTW bike that can tackle lots of hairy bits the seat is SO important! My a$$ is as hard as the next chicks but we had to put a giant wooly on that torture device. Yeesh!

Ok I do have to disagree with being able to ride 98% tarmac. There is an unbelievable amount of roadworks across asia. Most places they just tear everything up and make you ride some variation of gravel, dirt, mud, sand...and everything in between. It starts in croatia, albania, turkey where they grade the gravel nicely then all goes way downhill in the stans..Then there are other places where they paved 25 years ago but decades of rains, rockslides, trucks & abuse leaves massive road craters and whole missing sections (Georgia military highway or Assam) A lot of it is fun and the 800GS chomps it up.

Si
(In Malaysia, just passed 50,000km on our RTW ride)

On that particular bike he is gonna use on his trip or in general?

I kinda sorta fell asleep looking further through the postings whether we have now been blessed with wisdom for free. Now, have we?

Gotta go now and set up a paypal account to be paid for further sharing my golden words with you lot.
Cheers
Chris

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He is taking two F800GS Adventures From Germany to Magadan, starting June 10th, as a promotional launch trip for BMW. BMW have told him they have changed the rims already.

He gets to use the bike before its launched, because its BMWs promotion of the bike. They are BMWs bikes, not his. His bike is an G650 X-Challenge last time I asked.

In the same way that Joe Pichler (also mentioned above) got the KTM 1190 Adventure to take on a ride down Africa, a couple of months before it was released, as KTMs promotion of that bike.

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haha, I guess you're asking the right guy...

You mean an easier option such as spending 10 seconds on a google search to find all the massive amounts of info Colebatch has provided about his bike and his adventures in multiple and very lengthy threads on this and other fora? You should try it.