BMW pretty much had the 2 up market to itself for a LONG time. BMW pretty much started the class. BMW has a lot of owner loyalty.

FWIW, I'd guess the new Buell Uly will RTW every bit as well as the BMW1200GS while being lighter with an easier maint schedule.

Every bike has it's little quirks. Some quirks are more expensive than others.

I can't believe what the HUBB has turned to...

Firsly, people comment the bike's reliability that they haven't even owned for a long term.

Secondly, people are speculating even about the personalities on the bikes, telling that no GS goes ever to RTW because all GS riders are alike, rich, stupid and never go beyond their own country??? And only the poor and young people go to the RTW etc??? WTF? Are we here to generalise the motorcycle travelling world and can we describe it throughoutly with the few words only?

Jelousy? In need of the ego boost by lowering others? There's serious lack of the tolerance in the world!!!

Go to RTW yourself if you think you got guts for it and you are much better than anyone else (especially than any GS rider i forgot to mention) as it seemed to me you wanted to make it clear. Buy a pack of condoms, a second hand XT and go, noone tries to stop you here!

LIVE and LET LIVE!

Yeah you're right i'm geting defensive, imagine if all others start stating facts about Suzuki owners then in this thread, how much epic journeys they really take and how far off they go from their home street etc., generalising in the "mostly" words?

This is getting out of bounds of this thread, that's my point.

So back to original thread in the way it should be - let the people who have owned or own GSes post their experiences about the speciefic bike, not some off-topic "bollocks" about gossips, what someone did back in the 70s, how many rallyes has he been etc

You've got a fair point about the free speech vs the irony. If you ask from former soviet, then we ironize here, alot. But i think this is not the right place for the irony, it's maybe a nice thing to do over the "-table" forum, like the ADVrider.com for example, but not in a specialized forum like this where the information going around should be more "sorted" (for me it's the main reason that separates HUBB from all other biking forums) rather than a sarcastic viewpoint of the world that makes the "apples and oranges" look the same, or what you think(?) Another idea is to do a "Virtual Pub" forum section here where we can let our steam out, whether it's a ranting or a simple bollocks with irony and sarcasm.

Anyways, i'll stop bolloxing now, let's try to get back to the original thread please

he has a point, this is no ADVrider.com

please keep it calm and let people know how great this forum is, without all the silliness. We all come here to get information and not jugment. every opinion is important. There are better places for that kind of humor, if indeed that was considerable humor.

Thank you.

Let me ask you this: How many of the GS riders at the HU rally had actually
done RTW rides? I don't know about the UK but in the US most GS guys rarely go more than a few hundred miles from home. You can go to a typical BMW rally and out of 500 riders you have maybe a dozen who've
left the country.

that's cos you need a PASSPORT:confused1:........loz

ps,if you LIKE the bike gs,xt,vs whatever get it,everything has it's problems

http://www.advrider.com/forums/showt...hlight=steptoe

have a look at this..........loz

A good post !
Anyone reading that thread could make up their own mind apropos BMW final drive life expectations and determine for themselves whether this is acceptable for a very expensive bike .
My Summary :
Chain and sprockets have a very predictable wear pattern and can be observed easily .Cost and life expectancy is dependant upon the quality of the chain purchased .
The BMW final drives [and here I am referring to seals and/or bearings ] seem to last between 15,000 and 45,000 miles and can have a much shorter life if the bike is heavily laden .
It seems that if you rely on the dealer they will replace the whole unit and if out of warranty it will cost you megabucks .If you have the ability to repair and shim it yourself ,then the experience is not so bad .
According to my own searches the 1150 bearing is the same as fitted to the R100 ,I haven't been able to find a part number for the R1200 to see if BMW has changed anything .
A bearing is available from SKF that may be more reliable.If anyone has fitted this type it would be good to get some feedback.

__________________
Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

Good post.

Are you dealer dependent? If not, you have more options by just carrying along a spare. If so, you can be truly screwed time and money-wise....and open for some disappointments.

My 1st bearing went to about 84k miles, 2nd to about 60k, 3rd electively changed at just over 10k because of not being able to properly clean the housing/innards from the previous change.

There's no proven method for predicting rear bearing and seal life. 12k miles? 100k miles? Even dumping the fluid every 6k oil change doesn't do it. Tea leaves are hard to read...

If it were just the rear bearing and seal, that can be dealt with by common sense and some mechanical knowledge. If you've bought into the advertising and kool-aid thinking that this 'is' the tool for the job, prepare yourself for some interesting possibilities.

There are major differences between model years and anyone looking to do their 'dream trip' should be aware of this.

As has been posted before, no machine is flawless. How you use the machine and over what time will reveal many things. Want flawless with fewer problems? Go buy into a tour thingy....and tell your friends about it...and you.

Problems of different levels.....

You can have a talk with your chain and sprockets each day. How's it hanging dude?
Not too good.
OK, I can make a plan.

You can't have the same conversation with the BMW driveline.
Hey, dude, how's it hanging?
...'nothing'...empty barrel....
Cool, we're going further.

Ride anything, but do know the potential problems and how to deal with them.....ahead of time.

The 1200 has more problem issues than just the driveline.

Ride what you like, be prepared, have a blast.....

With my GS 1100 I have done the entire Mediterranean round trip, the all Middle East (Iran included), the all Caucasus and Central Asia, not to mention the entire Europe and the Balkans. All this in two up, fully loaded and on very bad roads.

I never had any single mininal problem, except the breaking of the cable of the speedometer and the breaking of the rear rack in Armenia due to huges potholes and heavy baggages.

I know a single case (mine) is not enough for a reliable statistic, but I know several serious long distance travellers and among most of them BMW has the name of the most reliable, d confortable and suitable bike for adventures (except, of course, very bad off road tracks).

Before this GS 1100, I had travelled intensively with a classic R 80 GS and I had much more problems, especially with the electric stuff and with leak of oil.

A last notice: I know nothing about mechanic, I've just always had the regular manteinance program by official BMW garages.

Re: FD bearing - I still try to kill mine. Previous had 60Ks, current 47K, absolutely no problems so far, not even a slack on the rear wheel that should give a clue that it will go soon. I do about half on gravel road, lot of two up and full of luggage at the same time.

I think deep down the longetivity depends much on the spacing shims - the bearing needs to be balanced right. That's why some blokes only got 5Ks out of the bearing while i know people doing over 200Kkms per bearing (yes!). If the forces apply asymmetrically (not correctly balanced), then the bearing will start to eat the sidewall of the groove, simple as that. So balance it right!

Also it depends on the use of the motorcycle. Heavy potholed roads and tracks kill it on GSes sooner than some tar purpose machines like BMW RT etc having the same system but sticking it on the smooth tarmac only. It's a non suspensioned mass afterall. So on a GS for sure i consider the bearing as a consumable part, maybe with some RT you could say "it last forever" in some terms, because there aren't much people doing more than few 100Ks with the bike. But as sayed before - everything that moves, acctually wears, you never can say "forever", it's a myth. The same principe goes to wheel bearings on any bikes, shaft, chain or belt driven - people tend to overestimate their longetivity and it's not rare to read travel stories having a blown wheel bearing(s) on the third-world potholed road. Also the steering and swingarm bearings are partly affected by poor road conditions, vibrations, shocks, dirt, dust etc. They're all moving parts. But people still tend to live in the myth that any bearing lasts 'forever'...



Re third world travel FD kit: on the most cases R1100GS you need to carry the main bearing, some different size spacing shims and the main seal. The so called "GSers spare extra-compact 'chain set' " looks the following:



The maker of the bearing is the well known FAG, but as it was discussed in the UKGSer forums, guys say it's not possible to buy it direcly from the FAG dealer because it's specifically designed for the BMW and it's not standard spec bearing, while some say it is possible, but it'll be more expensive than to buy from a BMW parts dealer.

The FAG markings on the bearing are these if it makes sense to anyone having knowledge of FAG specs:




Here i'll illustrate how small the set accually is to carry with you, bearing which is the largest part of the set, the seal is accually the size of the inner diametre of it:



BMW part numbers and price i payed for these:
33121242210 Bearing 54$
33127663482 Seal 23$
33122310547 Shim thinner 1.6$ per piece
33121450082 Shim thicker 2$

Don't know if those specs apply for the R1150 or for the earlier R80 and R100 airheads. Also note that there are alot of different shim sizes for balancing it, i just ordered 5 shims on above average smaller size, 1 a bit thicker just in case the gap will be too big to fill with smaller shims that will be for more precise work.

Also note that you don't directly need the seal. Having read some cases if it's blown that the seal was OK, but also the cases where it went together with the seal and also cases having just a leaky seal, the bearing was OK, so it's better to have it for sure.

Maybe this is the bearing that is supposed to be better
The Explorer bearing marked with an asterisk ;
http://www.skf.com/portal/skf/home/p...newlink=1_1_6a

__________________
Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

FWIW I'm leaving on a R1200GS to do London -> Nepal in two weeks.

I chose the R1200GS despite the reliability question marks because although people who have had problems are (quite understandably) very upset that such an expensive machine has had some pretty basic things go wrong, it's an extremely popular bike and nobody (except maybe BMW) really knows if the failure rate is any better or worse than any other bike. You can find countless horror stories from individual owners of pretty much any make of bike.

The R1200GS is relatively light, extremely comfortable, quite powerful, astonishingly capable offroad (at least as capable as I am), nimble in traffic and fantastic for motorways.

But this is the clincher - I absolutely love riding it.

steve

Very well sayed Steve. Lot of people complain and you mostly hear them only complaining, you DO NOT hear from the people who have lot of trouble free miles with their bikes, they just don't come to hype their bikes into internet forums. And from my experiences i must say BMW users tend to be more pretentious on even the smallest details than a average jap bike user looking around in the net. In the ADVrider they "cassify" themselves as a "Pretentious Beemer Fukwits", quite well describes them acctually, in some points of view.

It's the bad news that makes the news, as we all know.

So ride the bike you like in the reality, not the virtual web bollocks!





Re: since this thread is specifically about the BMW reliability, then check the interesting survey and statistics about 10,000 bike owners:


English motorcycle magazine, Ride, has published their survey results amongst 10,000 motorcyclists in the United Kingdom in this month's publication.

The motorcyclists were asked how reliable their motorcycle is. Results:

1. BMW (90%)
2. Honda (89.2%)
3. Yamaha (85.5%)
4. Triumph (84%)
5. Suzuki (83.2%)
6. Kawasaki (82.8%)
7. MZ (81.3%)
8. Harley-Davidson (80.1%)
9. Aprilia (77.1%)
10. KTM (74%)
11. Buell (72.2%)
12. Cagiva (70.5%)
13. Ducati (69.1%)
14. Moto Guzzi (68.8%)
15. CCM (63.8%)

The question was asked here: how many of the these bikes really go RTW?



Chris Scott did statistics some time ago:
"I’ve been doing some analysis of the World Trip Reports sent in by Adv riders from all over to my AM Website over the last 7 years or so. Guess what the most popular bike is? Wrong! but while you’re working it out you may like to know the popularity by brand in the Trip Reports (that is not so surprising):

BMW 26.2%
Honda 25.6%
Yamaha 17.4%
Suzuki 8 %
Kawasaki 8.4%
KTM 4%
Others 10.6%

Among the BMs the ranking is:
100GS (including GSPDs) -23
1150 (incl Advs) -22
650 Funduro carbs -19
1100GS - 18
80 GS (not incl.G/S) 14
EFI 650s 11

By far the most popular Honda:
Africa Twin (32) of course
Transalp (18)
Dommies (14)
Wings and XR650Ls (6)

Yamahas, no surprise here:
XT600E (some Tenerised?) 18
Teneres 17
XT500s 14
XT660 6
"


Original thread here: http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...stats-you-4972

It's just a statistics, but it gives you some idea of the most common RTW going bikes.