I've enjoyed BM's in the past but didn't enjoy the 'club or forum, both moderated to the extreme, so much so I sold the bike. I'm not a winter rider so need the banter n bollox of a good forum to get me through to the spring. Hey ho, no such nonsense here, me thinks... Regards Marsh
I got free membership to the MZ Riders Club when I bought the mighty MZ - this was pre-forum days. Thought I'd pop along, seeing as they were meeting in a boozer. Wow, that was scintillating. I know all about squish clearances now...
i once spent a weekend helping a mate clean his bosses GS1200 so he could trade it as the garage would not touch it in the state it was in , his boss was a millionare and was pissesd off with the garage for not doing the deal and he was going to buy 5 new bikes for him and his mates for a big trip , when the garage realised thier mistake and loss of custom they could have not been any nicer but way to late" big garage in bridgwater rymes with sliders ". which was good for my mate as his boss said he knew what he wanted back on the bike and if we sold it we could keep the proffit ,on on ebay it went and a fine proffit was made .
MZ orCZ thats two bike i will not ride , i had a CZ250 as a loaner fron a garage for two weeks , what a shit bike
Iv just had a read through this whole thread while at my desk and had a good chuckle to myself. Now i probably haven't been riding half as long as some of you and at only 22 i get looked down on by older generation bikers anyway but my view is its a class thing i was a member of a GSXR forum before coming here and its a completely different place to be. in my eyes the majority of bmw riders and drivers are brand whores my brother is one of them and i make an effort to not let him forget
This topic is so good! I recently added one of the new water cooled (ballistic, but not quite Multi ballistic, he adds quickly to pacify the Multi 'knobs') GSs to keep my Ducati 999S company and the reactions of my friends was predictable. They knew I was a 'knob' because of my Ducati, you know how it goes...what the h**l have you got that for?.....sounds like it's falling apart.....keep it in the garage when it's raining.....the belts will break soon and it'll be wrecked.....Jeez he's even got a Ducati T shirt.....wouldn't have a Ducati if you paid me etc etc etc. Now the new GS has appeared on the scene, complete with BMW jacket, they are now speechless. (By the way those BMW jackets are bl***y premier pieces of kit) To make matters worse, I have a BMW car, because its really good, after a succession of (4) troublesome new Audis. It's really funny to listen to the comments especially when they, almost to a man, ride the most boring Japanese bikes known to man, dress like they haven't bought any new riding gear since they were teenagers and think a European tour is a day trip to Brittany when I have Multistrada'd it to WDW and toured E. Europe etc etc. I'm sure you all realise that Ducati/BMW/Harley owners are all the same to the vast majority of Jap bike riders so anyone picking on BMW riders in this thread is actually dissing themselves. For the record, the new water cooled, electronic suspension/engine mode/TC controlled GS is a premier piece of kit and is so not like the old versions, any preconceived ideas you have about them is misplaced. The steering/handling is surprisingly good. That's not to say it will stay with a Multi on a twisty country road but it is more capable than you might have believed. See you on the road fellow 'knobs'.
I have another question, why do they mostly travel in pairs? Is it so they can defend themselves from the inevitable abuse of wearing matching goretex and camera cases?
For the same reason Blue that we Ducati boys don't like arriving at a bike meet to find we're the only Ducati there and people stand around shaking their heads whispering to each other. The Harley boys ride in big groups so they have someone to talk to when they stop. Same with BMW riders. Abuse gets so tiresome so you naturally drift towards your comfort zone.
I had a BMW R1100S which I thought was a great but heavy bike. I swopped it for a 996 which trashed its own engine. Now I have a Kawaskai which is great. 'Characterful' bikes are cool but they have character for a reason- something is compromised. I thought the build quality was not great on either machine and the running costs on the Duc are too much for a road bike. The horror stories regarding ABS, clutch and paralever bearing failures on BMW's make me think twice about having another one. Ditto the Duc.
Ze problem mit ze German bikes is zat zey are huge, built for ze Teutonic frame. The advantage with Italian bikes is that they are small, built mainly for short-arse Italians. As such you can dominate them. And we all know how much fun domination is.
I noticed the size thing when i got my 1098 sat on it, it feels tiny. Yet it looks huge when looking at it with some one else in the seat. I recently rode a HP2 it felt big and bulky but handled like a well set 600 was rather odd
Manga, I know what you mean about the old 1100/1200 BMWs, however things have moved on e.g the latest GS has a wet slipper clutch mounted at the front of the engine behind a cover in place of the dry, car clutch buried at the back of the engine needing the back half of the bike removed to get at it and the old hydraulic servo brake system which was a pig to service has been well and truely dumped. There are hundreds of thousands of BMW paralever shaft drives out there but I don't know anyone who has had anything other than a oil seal leak but I suppose there have been some. It doesn't seem to stop hard cases putting them through serious off road adventure travel though. I don't know if there has been any upgrades on the shaft drive of the new GS but it has changed over to the near side of the bike so there has been some changes to do this and I would expect that this was a good opportunity to mod anything that was causing a warranty cost issue, but I don't know. (Apologies for talking BMW details on this site)
