Ducati Multistrada 1200S thoughts
 

I don't own one, and can't afford one, but I'm curious. The Ducati Multistrada 1200s is three years old now, and the 1000cc version (which is a completely different bike) even older, yet i've not seen any mention of them in this forum.

I've never ridden one, but. it's been raved about in magazine for the past few years. It also has a price tag to match the hype, so a carnet would be killer. Careful planning would be needed.

From my understanding it's not really suited to off road stuff, but most RTW trips are actually on roads, albeit some of them gravel, rocky, or filled with pot holes.

Has anyone traveled on one, or heard of anyone traveling on one?

I met a group of six or 7 of them in the Yukon in 2009.

The small front wheel make them un-suited to anything beyond graded gravel and this Texas-based group had avoided any real dirt or bad roads that the Yukon is filled with.

On their 18,000-mile round trip they'd experienced exactly no problems other than two flats and some engine unhappiness due to the poor gas you often find in the Yukon/NWT/Nunavut.

Later models have even more power, excellent electronics (that seems more than a bit ironic on a Duc - and I've owned my share though not for over a decade). The riding position is excellent and their road manners exhilarating.

Plenty reasonable, IMHO, if your RTW means all tarmac - something that wasn't really possible until relatively recently. The lack of traditional spoked wheels speaks to it's lack of dirt or pot-holed pretensions.

Forgive my ignorance, but why are spoked wheels better for bad roads?

Well, if the mag wheels were stamped or perhaps forged, it might not be the case. But they're almost always cast. A hard impact that deforms the rim cannot (or should not !) be re-bent to permit the tire bead to seat.

Mag wheels support the use of tubeless tires, a giant benefit. But an extruded (cold forged . . . ) rim can be repaired when a casting should be replaced ASAP.

Recently I made road worthy a bent cast mag on a BMW that had hit a large pothole after riding all the way from Canada in UB, Mongolia. The rim was too deformed to support a tubeless tire but would easily manage an inserted tube. It's an "old" trick.