My goal here is to get reviews on a non Harley from experienced Harley touring bike riders. I would like to know what they see as the differences in the ride, the engineering, the handling, the comfort, and the long term rideability of this one other bike ...
ok, lets get more specific :-)
first of all when you sit on the BMW everything feels smaller, more lightweight, a little confined - but less stable too. At first it seems difficult for your feet to find the right position after taking them off the ground as evering seems so small, narrow and at the wrong place but you get used to it, it's more or less like taking out a Sporty or a V-Rod when beeing used to the E-Glide.
As the drivers position on the bike is already quite different - upper body more foreward, legs more behind and almost no room to move, you feel like just fitted into it - at least my wife doesn't like hers at all. I didn't take her on my test ride but she rode with our friend several times. She complains because of no room to move around, beeing more exposed to wind and rain and still having less sight ahead. She does a lot of photographs on the E-Glide but would not do so an the BMW.
Then your gear for driving a BMW should be different: no big boots because you are acting in quite confined space down there, tight fitting jackets as the wind blows into loose ones - and definitly a full helmet as the wind considerably drags on half helmets.
At first you feel like the bike is going to fall over any second to any side in slow speed but you get used to this quite quickly. First moves on the parking lot are still sort of a challenge
But when you got the bike out to the street it feels extremely handy and - well for me fitting like a glove (but I'm 1.80 m and I think you should not be much smaller). The fun starts when you get into open country but beware: this bike does tempt you to speeding
It accelerates effortless and brakes brutally so be very carefull until you got used to that, you will lack the used feedback of sound and you will be going much faster than it feels for you.
The biggest difference is when driving at high speed at Autobahn. Doing 120 mph with the E-Glide is no problem but not comfortable enough to do it for any prolonged time - with the BMW you can easily imagine doing more than that for hours, the bike is rock stable and feels safe as a car at high speed.
All the technical gimmicks are nice to have - but it's like in a car: once you found "your" optimum position you will no longer need electrically moving seats, same with an electrically moving windshield and shocks will be tuned to as stiff as possible once
After some time you will probably miss the room to change your position as you got used to on the E-Glide, the glove - at least for me - than starts feeling a little too tight fitting. You will not move and look around talk to your BSR or have a smoke as much as on the Harley - but perhaps that fades when getting more used to the bike. On the other hand you will be more tempted into critical moves, closer overtaking, trying little silly moves - and ignoring speed limits.
After all doing 600 m a day with the BMW would be a faster but less relaxed trip I guess. And probably more dangerous despite the bike is definitely the safer ride - just because you will be more tempted to take it to it's limits.
That's about my summary but I must confess I only drove the BMW over a weekend for about 300 m and occasionally my friends bike for just some miles so my experience is quite limited.
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Topic: A challenge for my CVO brethren (Read 4824 times)