you're such a card patrick:confused1:....loz

I deeply apologise Patrick, I normally read through your hilarious ramblings about the abilities of the DL650 with a bit of a giggle and then move onto the sensible stuff, but this time I think it was the "HELL" that your VStrom has been through that pushed me over the edge and made me comment. I consider myself suitably chastised and I solemnly swear NEVER to respond to one of your inane postings about the "HELL" you have been through in your years of ownership of a Vstrom.

If you want to reduce the amount of "HELL" you are suffering, stick to the night riding.

In deepest sympathy and suitably chastised.
Lozza

I must admit that I am somewhat with Patrick (fill out your profile, lozza!!!)
I have some experience with a variety of motorcycles under conditions a bit rougher than the usual "commute to work and weekend trips" story.

Bottom line: I really do not understand the reputation of BMW motorcycles as being oh so reliable. Whilst they seemed to have been ahead with reliability some fourty or fifty years ago and some of the famed R75 Wehrmachtsgespann of WWII vintage are said to have travelled overland all the way from Berlin to Stalingrad and back reality has changed quite a bit:

Lucky if you own a R1100 /1150 / 1200 as you deal with BMW's quote: "Crown Jewel" :unquote and BMW seems to spend considerable effort on getting these bikes going and on keeping them going. The 1100 GS at Le Cap is doing remarkably well. Some minor oil leaks, a buggered clutch, a gearbox that shifts with the ease of it's russian army tank pendant, all fine after 100000km. Who needs a fuel gauge showing you w.t.f. as long as the little yellow reserve light works. Once you had the tank off you will also have sealing fuel line couplers installed which only cost a few bucks. Amazing that nobody at BMW seems to care or know about this.
Maybe worse that the brake discs wear into the mounting on the front hub. But BMW assures me that it's no problem - besides the nerve whacking rattle at every bump.

Much worse than the Crown Jewel: The unloved child F 650. After the first series of Funduros were bungled together at some Italian Spaghetti factory and everybody asked themselves if a BMW castrated otherwise fine Rotax 650 ConCam engine qualifies the product to bear the make's logo things could only become better with the change to the GS / GS Dakar and the move of the assembly line to Berlin. How wrong we were! The steering head bearings are as shitty as ever, same for rear shocks and the thing still weights as much as a truckload of bricks.

At the same time Japanese bikes have become boringly reliable. Two of my DR 650's have done more than 100000km and are still going strong. No major problems so far. A full service with valve job takes two hours and a R80 tappet socket is the only special tool you need to service the bike (and you can substitute a pair of nose pliers in an emergency).

But all this will not stop a BMW fanatic to dream on about the world's best bike...

Maybe the BMW fanatic will start dreaming about a low and easy maintenance japcrap bike after synchronizing the R1100GS's throttle bodies? I did it yesterday.
What a mission!
Not that the old Bing's were easier. But at least more accessible. The guys in Munich and Berlin don't seem to learn.
Can you swop the right and the left throttle body over :-) This would make the job sooooo easy!

Thanks for your help but I did buy the bike last week , after trying the 3 bikes with my wife , the more confortable for her was the 1200GS , I know that is not your first choice but I love to travel with her and confort was my first priority, the peg on the DL are to high for the passenger and the vibration are pretty bad at 80 M/H, the 1150 was the most confortable but a bit too heavy for me, I just did 1000 miles in the weekend and that is a great fun bike to ride, regarding maintenance and reliablity ,I have the waranty and a descent credit card.
I normally travel arround the world alone on my KLR650 or my XR650R but this new toy is only a addition to my garage for trip 2 up. I regret that the new bikes are sometime so high tech, doing mecanic on them is getting really hard just as my cars.
Thanks again for the opinion ( the ones which constructive)(esp Molly)
(I may buy a DL and prep it t replace the KLR for ride one up.

What a loads of bollocks!!! :P

Been away from a forum a while and now reading all this makes a big ironic grin into my face

"What a mission!?" You ought to go consult with some mechanic then, to learn how to perform a TB sync correctly? I do my 1100s TB sync less than 5 minutes (try that on any other plastic covered multi cylinders), we can do even a friendly comparision competition who does TB sync faster on a stock bike

Valve clearance check and adjust - I normally do it within 15 minutes, never seen any other bike where it's easier and more intuitive to perform on.

Full service I can do less than an hour if I'm somehow in a hurry. Normally I do it around an hour to 1,5 hours with a in my other hand. On my overengineered fragile jap bike I did it half a day compared to this and understood how much easier it is on a robust "german tank". Suzuki was like a fragile chinese plastic toy where they've been trying to cut down the costs on every corner designing/constructing it, whereas BMWs I own are built to last - more robust construction, thicker and better supported plastic, thicker paint and bits are much better thought through when working on the bike, considerably better accessibility to perform routine tasks, electrics and cabling better supported against the vibrations.

Reliability: together around 100 000kms with my later 1998 R1100GSes have ridden, mostly gravel roads and bumpy tar you only can experience in the ex-USSR countries nowhere else in the World and been bullet proof reliable. Not a single permanent fault per this mileage, only thing that's temporarely failed was the rear brake master cylinder overheating, when the bike was a full day in the sunlight with over +40C weather in Iran, then the rear brake was gone for some time until it cooled down. Also it's done over 17,000+kms of a travel without any maintenance at all on the bike, around half of it in the +45C weather (it's an air-oil cooled bike) in Iran with bad quality very low octane leaded fuel with valves making bad noise under load, that's two up and the bike's being loaded to it's max permitted weight and even over it, rear stock Showa shock kicked into maximum in a bad way often on the potholed smaller roads in Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Iran, but nothing gave up on the bike, didn't miss a single beat. I'd easily rate it's reliability to the maximum possible level after experiencing my own what the bike has been through, and I couldn't ask more from it.
Would you try to do the same abuse with a bike where the clutch and gearbox floats in the same engine oil?

I cannot say the same good words for many jap bikes around here, including my Suzuki GSX 600 that's been one of the most unreliable bikes I've ever had with a "massive" 50Kkms I rode it on the bad roads around here until I sold it, paying too much for it's much more expensive service and repair bits. Most of the faults and failures came from electrical side where the japs supposed to be much better and more jap way "hi-tec", but they simply aren't it proved.

I do all the maintenance and work on the bike my own, always.

We all know that every bike will have it's faults sooner or later, I don't consider myself to be very loyal to any make (hell no, I bash BMW service often) but so far my BMWs certanly have proven to me to be one of the most cost effective and reliable bikes to run in the bad conditions we have around here. I simply do not agree with the uncompetent statments above in this thread.

Hendi has made his choice and I think a good one, for 2-up travel the big GS is naturally very well suited.

Happy travels!

Dear Margus,

before your pink BMW glasses fall off your nose from excitement:

My main critics were directed at the F650.
IMHO the F650 (any model) is a pathetic bike. That's my oppinion based on 6 Funduros and two GS / Dakar.

I said lucky you if you have a R-GS as BMW at least bothers to sort out some of the weak points.
I don't think you find a lot of bikes where you have to synchronise anything after replacing throttle cables.

If running engine, clutch and gearbox in one and the same oil would not work then nobody would do it. Even BMW does it on the F 650.
A separate gearbox and a dry clutch is not a quality feature.

And now you can keep on praising your Nazi tank.

We keep on riding our agile and lightweight reliable and low maintenance Jap crap.

If the F650's are so bad, then I wonder why it took you 6 funduros and 2 GS'es to find out. I guess you wanted to be very very sure they were realy so bad :-)

My experience with the F650GS is very good. I did ride it from home in Holland to the NorthCape and back (+ 8000 km) and only had to oil the chain every morning and add 1/4 liter oil only once.

__________________
Jan Krijtenburg

My bikes are a Honda GoldWing GL1200 and a Harley-Davidson FXD Dyna Super Glide

My personal homepage with trip reports: https://www.krijtenburg.nl/
YouTube channel (that I do together with one of my sons): motormobilist.nl

Well said, Pete. That's a nasty and ignorant comment, Lecap. Why don't you spend a few years on Robbins Island ....and quieten down for a while?

This is just too stupid....

Like som other bikes you have should synchronise after replacing throttle cables, mine lasts 50.000km -70.000 km...
How many times have you changed the clutch on a jap Bike after 70.000km? The Beemer has still 70.000 km left...

Guess what kind of bike....


Easiest way of synch is to meassure the the distance of the open cable with a ruler, it will always run pretty good after this.
The propper way is to use a 6 mm tube and fill it with water/petrol/oil and adjust it propperly.
Anyway, 15 minutes max.


It's usually the driver who is the limit, not the bike:
YouTube - BMW Motorcycles HP2 at Erzberg MC Rodeo 2006!

... but Sala use to ride pretty good:
YouTube - BMW Motorcycles HP2 at the GCC Goldbach!

People that have used the Hubb for a while know that Margus has been around with his GS:-)