I still think gravity is more reliable. It seldom stops working

Absolutely..........

That is the main downside of FI. It requires a pump and a controller.

However, when did you last hear of a fuel pump failing on a Jap or Brit bike ??? (Ignoring Africa twins which can easily be replaced)

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

Ted

It just seems to me modern bikes are so fragile. The slightest thing will kill them completely.

My BMW had me stuck in a town for two days because the battery died. On any of my old Triumphs a dead battery would not have inconvenienced me at all.
When In the Czech republic my Enfields big end started to rattle. but I was able to ride on to Poland and back to Belgium and leave it with a friend. The subsequent ride in ride out cost of repair (to a much better spec), less than that of an ignition component for a modern bike.

My "Must have" disk front brake has an odd problem in that it sometimes when hot stays on. to fix it I ended up changing out the lot, master cylinder, callipers and pipe work, as changing the pistons and pads, made no difference at all. On a mechanical twin leading shoe such as the Triumph which is just as good a brake a repair cannot be tricky and would be possible to fix without having to import spare parts.

Seems to me old bikes and cars limp a bit when they are hurt, modern stuff dies.

I have to agree. The engineering tolerances are so small now. In the race for more power, less weight and lower manufacturing costs; things are getting fragile.

I don't want to turn this into BMW bashing thread but as a BMW tech, it's my area of extensive experience. But these things are true of most of the new bikes. Triumphs, KTM's etc...

eg. The new water-cooled 1200GS is mostly made of plastic. And if you compare it to a 1100 or 1150, it's almost completely different. Everything is so flimsy and brittle. It's A LOT lighter, but my god, I can't see one running around in good condition in ten years time. The factory processes and electronics mean than a lot of the components are now impossible to dis-assemble and repair. (without major hassle anyway). It's just REPLACE, REPLACE, REPLACE now..

Those engineers have stripped EVERYTHING back to the tightest tolerances to improve power/weight ratio and cheap manufacture.

But that's what the market wants... 99% of them will never be ridden hard so why would the manufacturer build it slower and heavier to do so.. And those who DO ride them hard suffer snapped frames, burnt out clutches and other such things... In that case, It's FAR FAR cheaper for BMW to replace those parts or even bikes than to change their whole production line. There is a reason why BMW have a FANTASTIC warranty procedure which pays out for almost ANYTHING... But hey, they can afford it !

I'm slowly building up a stock of what I class as the last generation of true Overland bikes. One's that you aren't scared to go more than 500 miles away from a main dealer.

XR650L, Dominator, XT600, Africa Twin etc etc. Bikes than any good DIY mechanic can fix themselves with a good manual and a little patience. Bike's that you can hammer and weld and fit non-specific parts to get you going.

I can say with no shame that If I was riding a new GS through Mongolia and it suddenly cut out on me, even as a Main dealer Technician, I would be scratching my head without a diagnostic computer. Even if I found the problem, without a range of specialist tools and spare parts I probably couldn't even fix it as most major components DEMAND that you use a specialised computer to programme, encode and calibrate them...



I'm not a doomsday prepper, but if they world ever goes 'Mad Max' (which is quite likely), you won't see any BMW's knocking about. It will be Air-cooled , carbed bikes with Machine gun's on the front... hahahah

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

Blimey Ted it's a good job you post under a nom-de-plume. Either that or no one from BMW's marketing dept ever ventures this far down into the bowels of the internet.

There's an element of deja ecoute with the bit about modern bikes being fragile, over complicated and impossible to fix without a computerised workstation. Anyone with a few miles on the clock might remember almost exactly the same things being said about Honda fours in about 1970 and how it was going to be impossible to fix them with a hammer, a fag packet and a bad attitude like you could with a Triumph or BSA (and still can with a Harley ).

Maybe bikes really are too complicated for their own good this time round but I doubt too many people would still worry about the complexity of a single cam 750 Honda as they set off on a Eurotour. Everyday experience usually catches up with the cutting edge stuff the factories build into bikes / cars if there's a demand for it. My prediction is give it a few years and you'll be able to diagnose electrical mahem at the side of the road with an free app on your phone. You'll need the £4.99 upgrade to route your way round the problem and fix it though. Either that or BMW / modern Triumph et al will have moved on to even more marginal wiring arrangements based on artificial intelligence and these bikes will seem like the good old days. You think it's bad now when the ignition antenna packs up in the middle of the Sudan, just wait till they programme your mum into the cpu.

Ted-
no- mine was not running from any daft outlets- wired into the battery/fused and switched manually.

BackofBeyond-
it already exists- it is a small portable diagnostic dongle made in Sth Africa- links to your smartphone via bluetooth and tells you why your bavarian monster is having a bad day. Real times values + etc
One click on the report sends it by SMS to your fav. mechanic whose palm you have already greased to help you if he/she ever receives this diagnostic report.
A brilliant little tool which tells you instantly if it's road side fixable or it's back of lorry time waving a $20 bill in the air.

Antenna fry- 10 minute fix if you have a spare - just zip tie spare key in center and to handlebars- unhook wires below oe one and relocate on spare.
The only pain is that there are two security bolts- so a set of those are on the spares lists too as is a new correct size drill bit. Drills are available pretty much anywhere.

FPC- carried a spare one + knowledge how to make a bypass- and one ready made carried
FD seal and knowledge how to replace final drive oil
Set of new Fork seals
Aside from consumable items that was pretty much the sum of the spares I carried- it was a very small pack which weighed little but was worth its weight in gold.

Simplicity would be nice but what with EU directives, the never ending need to feed the 'greed monster' and riders own need for power toys, it will not happen in our lifetimes! and it can only get worse!
I'm quite tempted with this one!

The future seems to get here faster and faster these days ...

If Ted ever bought a Panzer (or found one in a skip round the back of his workshop ) and had to use the dongle when it stopped in the middle of nowhere he could text the report to himself

I'd been kicking the tyres on Triumph XC800s at my local dealers recently (that was before my wife started kicking my tyres when I mentioned it!) but got put off by reports of antenna failures and a couple of other things. I've read they're not as easy to bypass / bodge as the BMW ones when they go and it was Triumph I had in mind when I wrote the stuff above.

Fortunately sanity prevailed when I asked myself whether I really wanted to get back into all of the cr@p that goes with dealing with dealers. I'm not sure I want to be welcomed into the bosom of BMW / Triumph / Mini family, warm and inviting though it may be, when it seems to mainly involve my new "uncle" and his idiot son with the spanners in his pocket helping himself to the contents of my wallet and telling me everything is my fault. I've got kids to do that

You have hit the nail on the head there......

Fault codes and symptoms mean (almost) NOTHING... That's why all these fault code readers are mostly a waste of money.

You need the bike in front you to diagnose it and fix it..

I keep telling people. Without knowing how to understand what those codes mean, it can be VERY misleading.

I often get customers asking me "hey, I read the codes with this £300 diagnostic tool I bought and it's telling me 'blaaah' and 'Blaaaah' and 'Blaaaaah'

You see....... A lot of these faults actually mean nothing. Some are normal.. A lot of them actually mean completely different things.

Only with experience do you know that certain ABS faults mean your battery is weak or that a servo motor fault means your exhaust flap is seized...

Some may argue that it points you in the right direction and to a certain extend they are right. Just like flipping a coin

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

I think a lot of the problems stem from the fact that old Brit bikes were for the most part designed in the 1930's to be cheap transport for the working man in the UK. Cheap, simple and easily maintained. It was only well after the war that Triumphs in particular were exported to the USA as leisure bikes. The shift from transport to leisure activities brought different riders with different aspirations.
After the demise of the Brit bike industry the Japanese seized on this new market and designed their bikes specifically for the American leisure rider. Very much like the way mammals evolved to fill the new space left by the collapse of the dinosaur epoch.

If you mean tiny little things scampering around with their legs a blur of motion while the behemoths were staring at a second sun rising in the east and thinking " hmm, looks like extraterrestrial junk, it'll fly by in a few minutes and then back to business as usual", then yes, that sounds about right.

The export or die strategy of trying to flog antique grey porridge plodders designed to take people to work at 4.00am on a wet UK Monday to a nation who went to work in cars and wanted bikes for fun was only ever going to end badly. Especially when only the stickers had changed twenty years later. Hollywood product placement and a bit of celeb endorsement might have worked as life support for a few years but you can only fool people for so long

If the WW1 generals were donkeys leading lions then then the post WW2 bike industry execs were complacent codgers leading bolshy militant strikers. Now there's a set up designed to go head to head with the Japanese. (all IMHO of course)

Now back to BMW electrics ....

You kind of miss my point entirely. The Brit bike industry collapsed long before the Japs really got going making bikes. they filled the void, (albeit for a different market) just look at the timings of when the great makers died out.
Brough, Vincent, Sunbeam, Douglas, Rudge, Scott . The remaning ones got clumped togerther to try to survive, Triumph/bsa. Norton/villiers. ajs/matchless. This all happened in the 40's and 50's When honda were still making lawnmowers. Yet a privately entered Triumph was still winning TT races years after the company had gone bust. And a single cylinder velocette still holds the worlds 500cc 24 hour speed record (set in 1961).

As a matter of interest. If you could have any bike that has ever rolled off a production line, brand new but had to keep it as your only bike for the rest of your life, what would it be?

I don't even have to think about the answer for myself.

You're probably right about me missing the point - it's easy on forums to go off at a tangent and reply to something else altogether. What was it you said again?

As you can probably guess I'm no great fan of the old Brit bike industry and never have been. All that's changed from my first exposure to them back in the early 60's to now is the kind of opinion mellowing that comes with age. I know for certain that had the first wave of Japanese bikes not come along when they did I'd never have started riding, so it's unlikely anything from these shores - pre 1980 anyway - will feature as my lifetime bike.

As to what would, hmm, head or heart? Practical or decorative? Economical or to hell with it? I could quite easily fill a warehouse with my lifetime bikes but if I go by what's actually been in my garage the longest, a bike I wanted since I saw a late 60's road test comparing it with a 500 Velo (can't remember which one) and one I very nearly blew my whole student grant on, it would be a Kawasaki H1 500. But "lifetime" with that bike could be rather short as sooner or later you'll end up in either A&E or the psychiatric ward because it's a really cr@p bike. These days it would probably be something practical like a Tenere but my younger self would disown me for that answer. I'll get back to you when I've slept on it :confused1:

There's a thing. I could happily live with either one of my last two bikes before I moved to France. The first I part exchanged in the 1960's for my first jaguar. the last I sold because I didn't have enough time to ride it and had done less than 500 miles in it's last three years with me so sold it to someone I knew would look after it properly and ride it.

sadly both bikes irreplaceable now and there is nothing being made these days that I actually want.