I had the 1100 gs loved it, the five speed was perfect, I put over 120,000 miles on it, on and off road, then I sold it to my m8 tony two years ago he still has it, he loves the bike, I wish I still had it,

I've got the 1150gs now done loads of off road, the six speed box is ok but not as good as the five speed ratio, the suspenion keeps bottoming out with touring boxes when I go off road, I believe the suspension on the 1150 was made in South Korea where the suspension on the 1100gs was made in house,

IIRC, suspension on Both GS1100 and GS1150 are low budget WP items. (WP is owned by KTM). Most owners I know ditched the stock shocks (front and rear) for Ohlins, Wilburs or higher end WP items. Big improvement. Our local BMW dealer had a huge bin full of original new or near new WP shocks off GS's. Small WP logo.

I rode both GS's off road and thought they were a bit scary. But I'm short of leg.
But a skilled rider can make it work. Then all you have to worry about is the failing final drive (bearings, shaft, Trans or rear drive) which so commonly fail or a CANBus problem or F.I. or ABS fault code.

We had some of these issues on our test bikes. BMW fixed them all. The old Getrag gear boxes were not works of art but most times did OK if you could accept the agricultural performance.

Here's the 1150gs, I'm sure I've got a good photo of the 1100 somewhere

Attached Thumbnails

 

We're (my wife and I) are "in the BMW camp" so to say but not because we like BMW all that much as we're not bothered by "status".
We both started out on a BMW F650 and we did like them a lot. Reliable as sunrise, good on fuel and very reasonably priced to buy and to maintain/fix (I do all the work on our bikes needed)
The only things we wished for were: Less weight and a bit more power.
As we both like the engine I've been doing some looking around to see what would be a good successor to the F's and having tried/looked at a good number of possible candidates we chose the BMW G650 XCountry. It's very light compared to the F series, has about 10% more power (53 to 48 HP) and is used (in XChallenge guise) by various people navigating the globe without much to go wrong reading their trip reports. The main downside to these bikes is the small fueltank but there are solutions to that. A suspension uprade is highly recommended though, especially for the rear shock on the XCountry.
A must do on any of the X range is a change of gear lever because the original aluminium one doesn't bend or break when you drop the bike on it but the shaft does ! Ask me how I know...
We "upgraded" our bikes with a set of 21" and 18" wheels so they roll better off-road.
Service intervals come only every 10.000 km so that's nice too. Valve clearances don't have to be reset very often either, maybe once very 30.000 kms.
Why the XCo and not the challenge ? The XCo is mostly cheaper to buy, has a better seat (which is also a bit lower than that of the XCh and the plastics offer better protection for the radiator IMHO.
The wheels or hubs are hard to come by though so fitting different size rims could be difficult and probably costly.

There are a number of new adventure bikes coming out at the moment and I'm interested if anything comes close to the X.

Cheers, Ard

I've put some orange on my bike simply because I like the colour





Both our bikes also have a high front fender for not getting caught up in mud.

Well I ride an old ´89 beemer R100 GS.
I know every bot on this bike, as I have rebuilt and modified it all by myself (except the motor and gearbox which where refurbished by engineers).
So maybe the comparision with an original BMW R100/80 GS won´t fit.
First of all I like the advantages of the kardan, it just almost dosen´t need any mantainance.
And I can repair almost everything on the roadside.
It´s quite heavy and big and the main emphasis is very high which makes it hard to handle while pushing or manoevering around. But I can ride almost everywhere (at least for some time)

Attached Thumbnails