Well I havent tried any of those, but what is says in the link in the opening post is that the new model has better seat (not all of us want to stand all the time while riding a bike...), better windscreen, better rear frame.
And I dont know is ESA and ASC is options on the excisting model.....

You must have me excused so very much - but I really dont want to order and pay two books to have an idea of Your opinions about this issue....I have hoped for an easier option.....

Anyhow - a very few persons have the ability, the energy, the time, the knowledge and the economical option to build their own bike. Us others must buy a stock bike and - at best replace a few things and add a few others.

And what other negative parts on the new GS800 adventure except the rims did you mention?

ESA and ASC are indeed already options on the standard F800GS. I got around the highly uncomfortable standard seat by using an AirHawk (which I have been transferring from bike to bike), and bought an Eagle windscreen from Australia.


Admittedly the Eagle screen is nowhere near as cool as the one on the F800GS Adventure.

Better rear frame? The existing model is presumably built to handle a heavy rider and pillion and heavy luggage, so I'm not sure what's needed for a few more kilo of fuel.

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Well I dont know if its easier for you (cause it means you might actually have to do some research), but here's a free option. You can read through 2000 posts and 120 something pages in this thread: RTW X-Challenge Adventurization - ADVrider

Its not only about "negative parts". An opinion of a machine is an opinion. It can be negative or positive. You are turning opinions of a paper machine into perceived personal insult. I think you need to remove yourself from a love affair with a machine that you clearly have not even seen yet. A machine is just a tool for a purpose. If the tool doesnt fit, it doesnt fit. If it doesnt meet a particular purpose, then why take it as an insult if some one points that out - after you specifically asked other people for opinions.

You have Tim Cullis here, probably alongside Chris Scott, the english speaking worlds most knowledgeable and experienced guy on Morocco, telling you he thinks the gearbox ratios are all wrong, and that he concurs that the rims are crap. If you are new to this, which I suspect you are, then you could do much worse than to listen to the words of wisdom from people who have been doing it for a long time, on a lot of different bikes, in a lot of different places, rather than just assuming you are an instant expert or that marketing people know what an adventure bike needs.

I have a truck load of experience in Siberia and Mongolia, probably more in Siberia than anyone else on the planet. I have done adventure riding across the developing world on everything from 115 kg bikes to 230 kgs 1200s and almost everything in between. I know what different bikes feel like, ride like and handle like when loaded up for travel and adventure in a huge variety of conditions. I am telling you the rims are crap, the bike is too heavy for what it is. I also said apart from that the bike is going to be solid but never spectacular.

If you dont want to hear it, then dont listen. But do us all a favour and dont ASK for other peoples opinions if you cant handle them.

Its not your first born son ... its a motorcycle ... a motorcycle that you haven't even seen yet. So dont take views of it that you disagree with as a personal insult.

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I've heard from several sources that the alloy was changed (2010?), but if it's true it's still might be just a minor upgrade. It has 36 spokes so it's easy and cheap to find another rim.

If I remember correctly the rim on the bike above had covered a pretty long and hard distance before it got trashed. Geir (XChallenge) also changed his front rim after the trip - I don't know why.
Maybe the standard rim is all you need, it depends on your luck and how you use the bike. On the other hand sturdy rims are cheap, I would have changed both rims. Suspension is a bigger issue...


BTW:
The increased range is nice!

The rim in the pics was from a bike bought new in Norway in early 2012 ... I believe. So if it was worse before 2010 then the first couple of years rims must have been terrible.

Yes he did a lot of miles on the rim before Siberia but it was all on asphalt apart from 500 km or so in Tajikistan - which was graded gravel roads.

Geir's X-Challenge rims suffered minor damage. As I mentioned above, they suffered damage, but a fraction of what the F800 rim suffered. Geir has since changed to an Excel rim (a) so that the bike is as good as new and (b) cause he wants to keep riding it and adventuring with it and felt that a quality front rim was a wise investment so that he never has to worry about it again.

At the end of the day, a good Excel rim is about 190 EUR retail! and the top of the range rim money can buy about 250 EUR. I dont want to even guess how low BMW could buy Excel rims at an OEM level, in bulk runs of thousands ... no more than 50 EUR thats for sure - probably 30 EUR. So maybe BMW save 20 EUR by putting crappy rims on the bike.

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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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www.exilepixel.com
www.c-note.dk

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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The OEM front rim on the KTM 950/990s is soft. But . . . without knowing the exact model . . . I've seen plenty do far more than the eastern BAM without a problem. I have an Excel A60 1.6 on mine.

As for the "cheap" KTM forks ? The company is guilty of being a box of (high quality) parts across really all models. There are ALOT of BMWs running WP (KTM) forks for all the right reasons.

Recently, on ADVRider someone put forth an "Ohlins" upgrade over the standard WP parts on ADVs/SEs via a poll.

Over 60% of respondents said "nope, I'll spend the money on ". The majority of those had re-valved and/or re-sprung their forks. KTM suspension parts are pretty good, at least.

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Orange, it's the new black.

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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Did some trips.
Rode some bikes.
Fix them for a living.
Can't say anymore.

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 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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When is this bike going into mass-production? Can i order it with tubeless tyres?

- Thanks for the two books you recommended. I just ordered them online.

- i'm having some off-road experience, two weeks Marocco and two months crossing West Afrika. Came from a suzuki v-strom 1000, changed it for a new yamaha tenere (2008) which was my first Marocco companion and is in Nigeria now (for sale there).
At home (Belgium), i'm riding a BMW GSA the whole year. No car anymore. Now i'm looking for a new lighter all-round bike, have seen the new F800GSA at the dealer few day's ago. Was thinking about changing my GS for it. Reading this topic i'm more heading to a X-Challenge now as a second bike in Belgium and once preparing for a RTW tour.

this also made me change my mind. Buying other rims is a peace of cake, other engine out of the question. :-)

But just curious, could you comment more on this?
It's kinda heavy for off-road, i know ( just saw this > youtube: F800GS trail adventure ) but so is my Yamaha Tenere, 'top-heavy' while the BWM's gravity center is lower due his lower located fuell-tank. But these are somewhere dual purpose bikes. And loaded with long-time-travel luggage on such bikes i would for sure avoid trail tracks anywhere as much as possible :-) Have done some day's on sand(y) tracks in West Afrika, whished i was on a bicycle those day's!

Given the 800's meager power (say in comparison to an 7-year old KTM ADV), it's woeful suspension components . . . it's pretty heavy "for what it is".

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Orange, it's the new black.

Yes I can comment more on the weight issue.

The dry weight of the outgoing standard R1200GS is 203 kgs.

The dry weight of the F800 Adventure is the same. Its supposed to be a lighter bike - a middle weight bike. It isnt. If 200 kgs is a big adventure bike then middle weight bikes should be 165-180 kgs dry. I cant see how anyone can consider a 229 kg wet weight bike (without luggage) anything but a big / heavy bike.

The problem is when you look closely at an F800, you struggle to find any evidence on the bike have BMW designers been weight conscious. If BMW had put a little effort into weight reduction the bike could easily be 25 -30 kgs lighter

Your Tenere 660 is also about 185 kg dry weight. As far as I am aware, its the heaviest single cylinder bike in the world. Possibly the heaviest single cylinder bike ever built. Again, Yamaha has made zero effort to reduce weight. That bike could be 40 kgs lighter.

Manufacturers make a lot of effort to reduce weight on track replica bikes, on MX bikes and on proper enduro bikes. But they dont make any effort on adventure bikes. And if the adventure bike buying public dont demand lighter adventure bikes, the manufacturers never will bother making any effort to reduce the weight of them.

In response to your debating of F800 vs X-challenge (144 kgs dry), I recommend you read these thoughts from a man who not only owns both, but has done proper off road adventuring on both the F800GS and the XC (each bike for at least 3 months across Siberia and Latin America) - With that experience of both bikes I know of no-one more qualified to give a balanced, objective comparison on real world adventuring on those two bikes:

ADVrider - View Single Post - Sibirsky Extreme 2012

The same guy, in another post in an answer to a question about comparing the two as adventure bikes, wrote this:

Bear in mind he was referring to the F800GS ... the new F800Adventure is 15-20 kgs heavier again!

A further interesting observation related to weight from one of us HUBBers riding around the world on a KTM 690 (138 kgs dry) at the moment. He was last month in the stunning scenery of Tajikistan ...

ADVrider - View Single Post - RTW with Noah on a KTM 690

Why have a big bike if it will limit your trip?

To me this is one of the ultimate questions that I see people who are new to Adventure Motorcycling failing to ask themselves. Certainly there are some very skilled riders for whom a big bike will not limit their choice of routes. But they are a tiny minority in the world of adventure riders. For the rest (98%) of us mortals, we need to seriously consider weight.

You should not be limiting your adventure because of your choice of a heavy bike. If a person limits their adventure because of the weight of their bike, then the adventure itself was not their priority. Maybe image is? Maybe something else? (not that there is anything wrong with that)

My experience when it comes to bike selection, gear selection, tyre selection etc .... is you should plan for the toughest parts of your trip. If a guy is riding from London to Cameroon, across the Sahara, the experienced man will not select his bike, his tyres, his luggage as to what will work best on the motorways of Europe. If the hardest part of that planned trip is the dunes of the Sahara, then he needs his choices to first and foremost, be compatible with that. Any adventure bike for a given trip is a compromise. But the selection criteria you should compromise the least, are those required for the hardest parts of the trip. A wise choice is not an even compromise between all aspects of your trip, its a compromise heavily biased towards the hardest parts of your trip.

You should plan (and select gear) for the toughest parts of the adventure you want to have. Any bike, any luggage, any tyres can deal with the easy stuff ...

Here are more observations related to bike weight from another HUBB writer a few weeks ago in Mongolia:

Whats clear from those observations is that the amount of fun was totally connected to the weight of the bikes.

Here's another story from last year and Mongolia - written from the perspective of a different guy on a KTM 690 (138 kg dry):

ADVrider - View Single Post - Sibirsky Extreme 2012

[edit] A new comment just in from UB, from another adventurer, whose 1200 GSA was too heavy for the job and ultimately arrived into the Mongolian capital on the back of a truck.

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...mongolia-71550

The reality is, as soon as you get off the asphalt, weight is a very very important issue. Lose 40 kgs and its a totally different experience, as the guy comparing his experiences between the F800 and the XC pointed out. The difference between suffering / enduring somewhere like Mongolia and enjoying it, is 40-50 kgs in bike weight.

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