Yeah I must say I have yet to find much info on the exhausts of the two. The Beamer used a totally stainless system whilst Aprilia went for a crappy steel system. It may be that the exhausts were infact not put on the Beamer by Aprilia but rather by another factory afterwards, but thats only speculation. The BMW was a more expensive bike new so I guess they could afford to have a better exhaust.

The SI may also be because BMW were trying to invent a 'new' class of bike with this Funduro, marketed as an 'adventure tourer' to basically make a road legal Dakar Rally type bike powered by a single, which implies reliability to the max. So they perhaps felt if they had an SI anything less than 10 000 it would put potential buyers off, once again speculation. Obviously they were not really inventing a new class, as the Peg and a few other bikes were made long before the F650, they were merely doing what BMW do best, sell vehicles. As far as the engine though, They were Rotax engines delivered to Aprilia already built with the two variants.

The only things that were significantly different were the front forks, the frame was steel on the BMW but alloy on the Peg and the rear subframe was different but only slightly. and then the plastics. Swingarm was the same. But as regards to 'fake' parts, none were used on either. they had single piston Brembo brakes, and a flip through Ebay will show you their pads are identical too. The wheels and hubs were identical as well as bearings and the entire electrical system from the regulators to the sender units was identical. the engines were also identical and once you take the clutch cover where it says the brand off, behind they both had 'made in austria' printed in the same places (ie. Rotax). It all boils down to BMW using Aprilias expertise to manufacture a bike for them under license, as they had already established a name in big single trail bikes with the Peg Mk1 and 2. Bmw obviously kept this quiet though although a lot of the parts like the mirrors clearly had 'made in Italy' on them as well as the instrument guages.

Yeah Electrics are something the Italians have never got good at unfortunately. They always seem to forget the basic and try make things complicated where they dont need to. I have on many occassions whilst on a dead flat road in the middle of no where, having turned the bike off to rest or get fuel, thought that as soon as I got home I would rip out the electrics and install a modified Honda system, as she just refused to send power to the starter motor!

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Moto Guzzi California 1100i
Honda XR650R 2003

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