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:

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.

To ride or not...

This is probably the last good day we're going to get this year for riding. November 21st and it's sunny, and the temp will get above 50!! Tomorrow it may snow. The RC is calling for an "informal" ride.

I've got a scratchy throat - probably coming down with what the kids had last week, bless 'em.

Switching from riding to guitar for the winter.

My bike's electrical system developed some kind of short right as I put it away after the last ride. I think I can fix it, if nothing got seriously damaged. The wiring under the front fairing was smoking, but it didn't start until I was rooting around in the spare battery box for my garage door opener. I bet I took some of the old police accessory wires and crossed them or something.

Oh, what the heck, put on the long underwear, put electrical tape on the wires, and go for it!