WORDS : Jock McLauchlan PHOTOS : Geoff Osborne
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Regular readers might know my personal adventure machine is a BMW R1250GS Rallye . It ’ s a great ride and , largely , does the things I want it to do very well . Of course , there is no such thing as the perfect bike , and it has its foibles , but that just seems to enthuse the engineers at BMW , they just keep on refining and evolving their top of the range boxerengine ’ d R-series adventure bikes one iteration at a time . Where we got the new shift-cam motor with the R1250GS a couple of years ago , the new R1300GS comes with a bigger motor and a complete chassis re-design too . The latest version is a revolution rather than the normal evolution we ’ ve seen from Bavaria ’ s finest .
THE ‘ OLD ’ WAS PRETTY GOOD I ’ m nothing if not a fair Kiwi ... and I ’ d say balancing the good and bad on my own R1250GS goes like this ... the power delivery is excellent ; very smooth , powerful and user friendly . The downfalls are that first gear is on the tall side which compromises tight offroad use , and the cylinders get in the way . But ... no amount of dreaming and hoping will change that . On road handling is terrific . Light feeling , agile yet planted . In the right hands it will scare a Superbike up a winding road . The 19-inch front wheel is superior to the 21-inch for grip and feel on tarmac ... and the reverse is the case on loose gravel and dirt . On hard packed gravel the 19- inch is actually pretty good . General comfort and weather protection is excellent . The suspension action is only ‘ okay ’. The good point is ease of adjustment , being electronic . The down side is the action across the board is only average . It is either a little too harsh or slightly on the soft side depending on the setting that ’ s been dialled in . On gravel and offroad the handling is ‘ different ’. The swingarm is short which makes power slides a bit nervous . It is not a bike that you can throw sideways entering a turn and drift around on full lock . Instead , it likes a respectable controlled entry , but can be braked hard in a straight line , then driven out smoothly with limited wheel spin . Done well , it can be really quite quick and
KIWI RIDER 57