Bike Review: 2000 BMW R1100RT-P

Okay, this is my current bike, and I didn't buy it new.  I've ridden a season and a half, and put 14,000 miles on it.  I got it used from Moon Motorsports in Monticello, MN, and they got it from someone who got it from the California Highway Patrol.  I went to this bike from my 1988 Yamaha Venture XVZ1300D.  I just returned from a 10 day solo trip to Arkansas and back, riding in the Ozarks, and I guess I feel I have enough experience with this bike to have some opinions.

When I bought this bike, it had 80,700 miles on it.  It was my first BMW, and first fuel injected bike.
Test Ride:  The first thing I noticed test riding this bike, is that it handled really well.  The suspension was tight, cornering was easy, I could pull a 180 on a country road without practice.  It didn't have the raw acceleration of the Venture, but it was plenty adequate.  It was comfortable to sit on.  I had new bike fever.  I bought it!

Anyway, now that I have 14,000 miles on it, here are some things I've noticed.

Performance:

This bike corners better than any of the other 4 bikes I've owned.  Of course, that includes 3 cruisers and a full dress tourer, and the RTP is essentially a sport tourer.  But the suspension is special, with almost no dive on braking, solid feeling in the corners, and not much effort required to initiate a turn.  It leans more than the Venture for the same radius turn, but it takes less push on the handlebar to get it to come around.

As for raw acceleration, well, the Venture would beat it, with the 1300cc liquid cooled VMax engine.  In spite of the extra 100 lbs the Venture weighed.  But the RTP has plenty of oomph for anything I do - I can get from 40-100 mph in the time it takes to pass a line of 4 cars.  So that's all I really ask.

The anti-lock brakes probably work - I've never locked a wheel.  I like that the hand brake is front and rear  linked, and the foot brake is rear wheel only - that gives me the option of using the rear brake in turns if I come in a little hot.

The engine runs a little rough, especially below 4000 rpm.  I think it's the fuel injection - hunting for it's set point continually.  It will stall at idle when I start it after it's been sitting but is still warm - I need to let it idle with a little throttle.  It was a little disconcerting at first, but I got used to it.  The fuel injection is nice in that it is less maintenance, and it works even with the bike lying on its side (Don't ask how I know this).

Gas mileage for me is 40 to 45 mpg.  With the 6.5 gallon tank, that's at least 250 miles per tank.  I've never run out of gas, and never tried to get more than 250 miles out of a tank. 250 miles and I'm ready for a break, anyway.

Comfort, Convenience, and Features:

Ok, the turn signals.  Left thumb for left, right thumb for right, that's different, but makes sense.  Right thumb up to cancel, that's an unnatural movement for me, and just seems wrong.  No flasher on this bike - I think I lost it when I lost all the police lights, but I can make an artificial flasher by holding both left and right signals down at the same time.

Clutch and brake levers are reasonable.  Throttle cable is a little touchy compared to the other bikes I've owned.  I use the Throttlemeister for long trips and occasionally to make the throttle a little less sensitive.  It's not a big deal, just different.

The shifting - this bike is a clunky shifter.  It wants to be quick shifted, and has a tendency to clash gears if you shift slowly when the bike isn't accelerating rapidly.  I've heard this is due to BMW using standard gears instead of helical gears.  It's a little embarassing if you're trying to be ultra smooth with a passneger and the gears grind when you shift.  And if I'm not real assertive when I shift, it will sometimes hang out in neutral. This is something I do find annoying about this bike.

Saddle is comfortable.  I've been told the passenger seat is comfy, but it vibrates a lot, especially at higher RPM.  BTW, some people really like this...   :)

Cases - I have two side cases, and the BMW system attaches solidly to the bike and is pretty logical.  My only gripe is that if you have the case open, take the key out, and then try and close it, it's really easy to bend the lock tab, which is a major inconvenience, and must be fixed / bent back to shape before the case is usable again.  My top case is a Givi, which has more room and a nice backrest for the passenger.

You can load up this bike pretty well.  Here it is loaded up with enough stuff for a 10 day trip:

Tale of Two Lakes Ride

This ride went really well.  I liked the route - I was a litle worried no one would show up because it was far north from the 694 / 494 beltway, but we had 15 folks.  Even though it was a rookie ride, we had no real rookies.  We were light on officers for blocking, but "drafted" Joel, and Don and Len were busy. 

I made one wrong turn in the middle of a tricky section.  It was right after a deer jumped out in front of me, so I'm claiming he distracted me. 

Ending point at was at the Little Bar in White Bear Lake.  The West Bank Motorcycle Club got there just before we did, and the bar thought they were us.  Eventually they got it straightened out, and we got our tables.  Just a nice night for a ride, a good group of folks, and I'm really happy the route worked out well.

Leading a TCMC ride Wednesday evening 7/21/10

This is the ride I'm leading - kind of gives you a feel for what it's like to design and lead rides for our club, at least rookie rides.  Check out Twin Cities Motorcycle Club if this kind of thing interests you.

The ride is called "A Tale of Two Lakes"

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, "It was the best of rides, it was the worst of rides.  It was sunny, and it was raining...."

Arkansas trip day 10 - dodging the rain.

Hey the whole day involved finding a route around the rain, and I was pretty much successful.
Here's the circuitous route.

I did have to spend 45 minutes waiting out the rain 10 miles from home under a gas station overhang, but I got there before it started raining, so I'm thinking that's still OK.

Arkansas trip day 9: Bowling Green, MO to Muscatine, IA

Today, I'm definitely out of the Ozarks, and into the river bluff country.  After missing out on a lot of twisty roads yesterday, I decided to go back and redo some of yesterday's routes, and add some things the guys at Gateway BMW suggested.

Here's Pepper, fully loaded for the road.  Do I carry too much stuff? Probably.

Okay, so I went back South on US 61 towards I-70, then cut over on county F, near Whiteside.  I was supposed to go up MO -79 yesterday, which goes right along the river and hits several historic towns.  So I tried the alphabet roads that were in between the two, and they were great - running up and down the hills by the river.

F led into W which twisted its way on in to the cute little town of Clarksville when it met up with MO 79.  It's a cute little town, and I stopped at a coffee shop, and they told me about 79 being washed out between there and Hannibal.

Okay, then on the way to Hannibal, I went on the detour, which was actually on a nice letter road (T) and led me into Hannibal.  On the way into town, I saw a group of bikes take a side road up a hill, and decided to follow them.  They were a riding club from Illinois, and the place they led me too was called "Lover's Leap."

Once I got into Hannibal, it was a little touristy.  There were signs like this:

And the Jail site:

Kind of working on the Mark Twain theme.  But it is a historical river town, with some cool buildings.

After Hannibal, it was a little further north, and then, time to cross the river.  Another ferry!

You may ask, how do you call the ferry?

So what is Illinois like?  It was at first very flat and straight line roads.  But I got to Nauvoo, and there were these historic displays, and restored houses.  Nauvoo was yet another place the Mormons tried to settle, but it didn't work out for long.

Then I went into the restored town, and decided to visit a house

I didn't realize that the whole town was restored by the Mormons and staffed by people who were more than happy to try and explain all about their religion to me. But I did score a copy of "The Book of Mormon."

Well, and then I rode till I didn't feel like riding any further, and that happened to be Muscatine, IA "Pearl of the Mississippi".  Super 8 w/ grits for breakfast!

Arkansas trip day 8 - West Plains to Bowling Green, via St. Louis

Today I deviated substantially from the plan.  After watching the weather, I went out to check the bike.  It had oil, tire pressure was OK.  Then I noticed a little groove on the rear tire.  I thought maybe after riding through some mud I got something caught in the tread.  Then I looked more carefully, and it looked like the belt.

Strangely I had been worried about the front tire before leaving, and decided I would probably replace it after I got back.  The rear tire was newer - the front had 13,000 miles, and the rear had 7000.  The rear tire was also hard to read the tread, because the center of it had no tread.

I decided it wasn't safe to ride any more than necessary on this tire.  Unfortunately, this bike has an unusual rear wheel, and most motorcycle dealers don't stock tires for it.  I called Charlie, my BMW mechanic, and he agreed I should replace the tire, and thought there was a place in St. Louis.  I looked it up, and it was Gateway Motorcycles.  So I decided I should replace it, and had to travel the 180 miles to St. Louis on it.  I talked with Don about how this affected the route, and wondered whether I should go via the fun twisty route through the Mark Twain NF, (shorter) or along the more boring US & interstate highways.  I decided on the bigger roads, figuring if the tire blew while I was on the highway I had a decent chance to keep control enough to pull over, but  if it blew while I was leaned over in a tight turn it could cause more damage.

So I finally got there - Don had warned me to be careful in St. Louis, as it's one of the more dangerous cities in the US - surpassing Detroit for most murders.

Here's the tire after I got to the dealer.

Frightning how quickly it got bad when two days before I was taking pictures to show off my chicken strips and there wasn't any overt sign of wear.

Spent a fair bit of time debating over what to get for a new tire.  The front is a Metzler 880 with a little bit of treat left.  The rear was a Metzler z6.  Because of the oddball rear tire, the options were:

880 on the rear.
Z6's on front and rear (the flat middle tread of the Z6 rear tire is counting on the front tire to split the water.
Michelin pilot road II's.  (Charlie recommended these before).

The 880's will last the longest, especially with the extra weight of touring and riding 2 up.  The Z6's and Pilot Roads will give the best traction, and the pilot road has a harder rubber down the middle, which is supposed to give a little longer life in that area of the tire.  I decided to go with the pilot road II's, and see what the life is.  In the future, realizing the life of a tire on this bike is more typically 6-8 k miles, I need to take that into account before I go on the road.  Changing tires on the road when you're not planning for it is a little stressful.

I got lulled into a false sense of tire security by my Virago 750 - I get 12,000 miles out of the Avon Venom X's I put on that bike.  But, the bike is a lot lighter than the BMW, and I seldom loaded it much.

Okay, here's some photos of Gateway BMW Motorcycles in St Louis

Chuck, the service manager, who did a quick reinforcement of my sagging antenna:

Chuck and the owner, Hans.  The owner's name is Hans, how appropriate for BMW!  Also, St. Louis has historically had lots of German Immigrants.

The support staff:

That's better:

So now I'm in Bowling Green MO, which is actually part way down the road for the day 9 ride.  I have the choice between an easy day today, or riding a little further and having a shorter day tomorrow.  Diane is going to give me a massage when I get home, so that's incentive for me to try and get home earlier on Sunday, so maybe that's the deciding factor.

Side benefit of going to St. Louis - they have those funky hoods on the gas nozzles, so the fuel vapor doesn't leak.  They've had them for years in California, but this is the first time I've ever had to fuel a bike with one.  Took a couple of tries for me to figure out that you can use your hand to compress the hood, and that will allow you to fill the bike's tank up to the top.  Then the little engineer brain gets going, and it would be easy to make something to allow one to use it on the bike more easily.  Then I figure, well, I'm sure someone else has already done this.

One of the benefits of a long trip alone like this is it gives me a chance to look over what I really want from life, what makes me happy, what stresses me out, figuring my obligations to family, friends, work, and maybe how to balance it all.  I definitely need alone time, but I think about a lot of stuff and like to communicate that. So the blogging deal is good, at least for me.  Hopefully some folks are enjoying this blog, too.

Day 9 - I'm in Clarksville MO, and I am at "Cool Beans" coffee shop, indulging my coffee and chocolate habits while taking advantage of WiFi to finish yesterday's blog.  So, if there are pictures in this post, then it worked.

TTFN

Virago Becky

Arkansas trip day 7 - North to Missouri

Today I was a little worried about weather, and I made it a point to pack last night, so, filled w/ Super 8 waffles, I was on the road before 8 AM.  It didn't take long for me to get out of town and back into the Ozark winding roads.  Yesterday, when I started out, there were more pine trees.  Today, there were more oaks, and they were in the middle of brown grass fields.  With the rounded hills, it reminded me a lot of California.

This time I tried to take a few more pictures to give a feel of the countryside.

I took one of the side routes Don had listed as an alternate on the map:  AR 16.  It looked like it was going to follow the ridge line of the hills, and that's one of my favorite things to do.

The chipped stone they put on the roads looks nice, and gives a pretty good riding surface.  And, if I missed that curve, I'd just slide into those nice cushy rolls of hay.

Now, if you look carefully at the picture above (click on it to open larger in another window) you will see that the sign with the arrow on it has buckling occurring between the reflective sheeting and the aluminum.  This must not be 3M reflective sheeting, because the engineer who designed the process to put the adhesive on the sheeting did a way better job than that.  How do I know, you ask? ...........

Doesn't that look like a car with two front ends?   Maybe a Corvair? A classic, but a fixer-upper.

There are rock cliffs above many of the roads.  And the country is so hilly that the roads do the roller coaster thing, or else are occasionally blasted through the rock.

Here's a couple of houses that make a little town at a corner in the road.

Ho hum, another road winding through the hills and cliffs :)

Don - you're sending me to Mountain Home - a stronghold of the KKK!  I even though I needed to pee, no stopping there, no way.

Crossing the Buffalo River

Okay - heading to the town of Peel - that's where the ferry takes me to the Missouri side of the lake.  This lake...

Okay, now I'll try and upload a video of the ferry arriving at the dock.  Note the rain, yes, after using luck and skill, and Don's weather reports, I finally had a significant rain event.  Rained all afternoon - which "dampened" my enthusiasm for taking pictures.

I have a video of the trip as well, but it's taking a long time to upload.  I'll keep checking until midnight, and then go to bed.  (note, didn't make it - try my youtube account

On the way across the lake, the rain got worse.  I reached the other side, and rode to the first place of shelter:  Tony's Pizza.  I stopped, and sure enough, there were two Russian motorcyclists who had stopped there to wait out the rain as well.  They were headed the other way, and left shortly after I got there.  There was a grandfather there with his grandson who wanted to give me advice on which way to go.

Anyway, on the road again, light rain, occasionally stronger, and then I stop at Dawt Grist Mill.  Which is now a restaurant, and they no longer have the mill set up, just the water wheel (not near the water) and some of the parts.  I took video of the sluice and dams, so you can at least get a feel for how the water is brought to the wheel.  I'll put that on youtube eventually.

So I pull into the Super 8 in West Plains, MO, and it turns out the guy behind the desk (Chris) just finished motorcycle mechanic school, and was really interested in the trip, the bike, etc.  We probably gabbed for an hour.  He suggested some roads for my trip north tomorrow, and sure enough, they are exactly the same roads that Don has on the map.  He got me a room on the first floor.  Anyway, the Super 8 in West Plains MO is definitely motorcycle friendly.

Okay, time for breakfast.

Arkansas trip day 6 - start of AR 7

This morning I woke up to fog - 6 AM and I couldn't see 100 yards.  So I decided to handle it the way Raven (our cat) would.  I went back to sleep hoping it would be better when I woke up.

Before I go on, I wanted to give a better impression of what the roads are like.  But who wants to stop and take a picture in the middle of gettin' your turn grove on.  So I decided to take pictures of my "chicken strips" to show  how steep you have to turn on these roads.

That's the unscuffed part of the tire, and it's about 1/2 inch on the front wheel.

There's about 3/8" on the rear tire.  The road is really making me lean the bike way over, and that's why I'm using so much tire.  Should mean the middle part won't wear as fast, right?

Okay, so a couple more shots from the Queen Wilhelmina hotel:

Note the homey, unassuming lounge area off the lobby.  Note also the picture of me in the mirror.  This is an homage to Jan van Eyck, and his portrait "Arnolifini and Wife".  (Look out - the engineer is going all art geeky on you.)
The picture by Jan van Eyck is a marriage license, and, by painting himself in the mirror, he is essentially portraying himself as a witness to the wedding.  Okay, so he's a Dutch Master and I'm a novice Kodak Easycam user - other than that, it's just the same...

Oh, BTW they had one of these things out front.  Being an engineer, even if it's not that kind of engineer, I had to take a picture or two of the cabin.

The cloud layer lifted just enough for me to leave.  I left headed west on AR 88 - which turns into OK 1, and runs along the top of the mountain's ridge.  The cloud deck was at 2450 feet - I figured this out from my GPS altitude, and the fact that I kept going in and out of the fog as the road went up and down.  It was a little damp, and there was an occasional sprinkle, but nothing noteworthy.  In 20 minutes I was down to the plateau level and riding east.

Today's roads were through forest, and while there wasn't as much vertical as yesterday, there were still some  twists and turns before lunch.  I decided to eat at a little place in the town of Story.

The woman who runs the place had a number of regulars who were telling her how to handle some electrical issues - not enough circuits for the drink coolers.  It had that feel that some of the places my mom hangs in Maine has - the interaction of the local folks.

Then I met up with the famous Arkansas biker road, AR 7.  At the intersection, while I was checking my map, a gentleman got my attention.  He wanted to know if my bike was an RT, and I told him yes, 2000 rt-p police bike.  Turns out he just got rid of his 2008 1200 rt, and the reason he gave was that the BMW dealer in Little Rock went belly up, and he had to go all the way to Benton to get it fixed, and that was just too far.  He has a Suzuki SV650 as his bike now.  He's been to Alaska and back, and he described the trip to me - left Arkansas, went to Texas, up along the rockies, to Baanf and Jasper, then some other places (I didn't quite hear 'cause I had my earplugs in).

Oh hey, that brings me to some things I'm learning about traveling with the bike.  #1:  bring less stuff!!
#2 Earplugs let me listen to the music w/o the wind noise, and that is much more relaxing for me.
#3 Pack the night before, so I can hit the road faster.
#4 Plan a layover day - I'm getting tired and the Queen Wilhelmina or Eureka Springs would be places I could easily spend a day loafing / recovering / exploring / relaxing, whatever.
#5 - I'm at my sharpest riding between 9 and 11 in the morning, and then I get a second wind about 3PM.  Not so much for the sharp twisties - they get my attention, but I'm a little groggy after lunch.

Anyway, back to the trip.  AR 7 is everything it's cracked up to be - through forest, some good twists, and when it's not twisting it's sweeping.  Don said that lots of the roads in Arkansas were built by the WPA in the 30's, and that when they were getting permission to build, each farmer wanted the road to go near his house.  So they twist to accommodate that.  Turns out I went by a CCC camp, so there is New Deal evidence.

I did see a fair number of bikes today.  I think this is more on the beaten path for bikes.

While I was trying to outrun a storm that was meandering up AR 7, I did stop to take a few pictures of Petit Jean river.

Speaking of New Deal, everyone wanted to take credit for the boat ramp that was built here:

The reason I wanted to check out this river, is that apparently the Petit Jean valley was made by this little bitty river, and that's one of the lookout sights I saw from Mount Magazine.

All for tonight.  I'll take a crack at uploading some video to YouTube, pack, and then go to bed.