Shame......

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

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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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