Does this mean that we will only receive a highly sensored marketing version on how it fairs ???



www.touringted.com

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

Joe is a marketing professional ... He has done marketing for Wunderlich and Touratech before and is now associated with BMW ... so there will be some censorship obviously - its his career. But he is blogging it live, so there is a limit to how much you can censor. You cant edit out major problems live ... only minor ones.

If he goes quiet for a week and then restarts in the same place, then you can be pretty damn sure some large details have been left out.

But from all I have seen of the 800GS, having helped a number of people take them to pretty rough places, is that the bike itself is suprisingly tough. Its durable. Its got a pretty bulletproof frame and engine. I have no doubt that the bike will make it. I also have no doubt Joe would rather do it on his X-Challenge, as indeed he was planning to do last year - lead a tour to Magadan all on X-Challenges. I guess when this bike popped onto BMWs radar, they all decided it was best he does the trip in 2013, on the new bike, and not as a public tour.

The five issues that seem to come up a lot with the F800 are (1) its much too heavy for what it is (2) the suspension is poor (3) the wheels are crap (4) many people want more fuel (5) the seat is not comfortable

The Adventure version addresses the last 2 of those 5 issues. Its better than nothing, but it would have been very easy to fix the suspension and rims while they were at it. And score 4 out of 5 for effort.

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The five issues that seem to come up a lot with the F800 are (1) its much too heavy for what it is (2) the suspension is poor (3) the wheels are crap (4) many people want more fuel (5) the seat is not comfortable

I'm just an 800GS pillion but here's my 2 cents. 1.The bike is heavy for what it is and tall. It'll roll over anything but if you are loaded going up a steep dirt track & hit rocks...you might end up taking a dirt nap unless you are super tall & long legged. 2. Can't complain about the suspension. I'm a big girl and we have gone airborne & landed HARD in Kyrgyzstan. We've done lots of gravel, rocks & dirt, bad road & off road and the stock suspension is still going strong. Can't say the same about some of the bikes we've crossed with that had after market suspension. That's a sucky problem to have on a fun road. 3 we have a dent in the front wheel rim but it hasn't affected the tire. That rubber band on the inside of the back tire just disintegrated though. We have also levered the tires off many times & managed to not damage the rims. That said Siberia would probably do them in 4. The tank is small but on a long stretch if you ride conservatively it's fine. We never ran out, even on the 420km stretch in Kazakhstan between stations.(we did carry extra though that we did not use) but that's a major complaint about this bike so lots of people will rejoice. 5. The seat. Ok from me the pillion: it's a plank of wood. This is something I will say hooray that they are paying attention to. If you are going to make a RTW bike that can tackle lots of hairy bits the seat is SO important! My a$$ is as hard as the next chicks but we had to put a giant wooly on that torture device. Yeesh!

Ok I do have to disagree with being able to ride 98% tarmac. There is an unbelievable amount of roadworks across asia. Most places they just tear everything up and make you ride some variation of gravel, dirt, mud, sand...and everything in between. It starts in croatia, albania, turkey where they grade the gravel nicely then all goes way downhill in the stans..Then there are other places where they paved 25 years ago but decades of rains, rockslides, trucks & abuse leaves massive road craters and whole missing sections (Georgia military highway or Assam) A lot of it is fun and the 800GS chomps it up.

Si
(In Malaysia, just passed 50,000km on our RTW ride)

Thats exactly what you will read.

As I said earlier, Joe is a marketing pro. So you will read that its not the bikes fault

You will read that its not cause the bike was too heavy.

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Shame......

It would be nice to hear a possitive travel report about the F800 that you could actually believe one day.

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

Well in fairness to the bike, it seems quite tough. All the reports I have read and seeing it on the trails riding next to me, the F800s can take a beating. But its just damn heavy. They cut 30 odd kgs off the 1150 when they made the 1200 ... And I can see at least 30 kgs they could cut off the F800 if they made the effort. The engine alone could easily be 15+ kgs lighter. It weighs 65 kgs !!

I know the Swedish engineers at Highland build V-twin engines in up to 1150 cc, that weigh sub 40 kgs. USHighland Metric Engine Platforms for Builders, Manufacturers and Consumers. A parallel twin is potentially lighter than a V-twin. So its not exactly asking for the moon to ask BMW (who are capable of building Formula 1 engines in house) to spend a few days with Rotax and make their 800cc parallel twin no more than 50 kgs.

The weight of the bike is its unredeemable adventure liability - you can change the crappy rims. You can change the crappy suspension. But there is nothing you can do about its lardiness. Right from the early off road stages it appears Joe had to scale back on the ambition of the off-road mission across Eurasia, and took asphalt across Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan instead. To me, that can only have been caused by either too much weight for offroad and/or unpleasant handling offroad. Almost surely both.

As for believability, any bike comments from a factory sponsored ride is going to have its credibility limitations, some more than others:
Heres a KTM couple from Mattighofen (KTM employees on a KTM backed trip, plugged on the KTM website) on new 1190s having arrived in UlaanBaatar last month.
"we are extremely proud of our two KTM 1190 Adventure Rs... The bikes have been nothing short of ideal"

And if you believe that, I have some fine swamp land to sell you.

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