Conan’s Blog

If you've been following my bike history (why wouldn't you?), you'd know I bought in to our electronic future about a year and a half ago, with a 1290 SuperDuke. As of 2014, there was nothing that could compete with that bike in the arena of top shelf suspension, brakes, electronics, horsepower and an upright seating position. But while the SuperDuke is exceptional at a short haul through tight traffic, or ripping up a twisty road, it's not in its strongest suit when you start riding the undulating slab of the 580.  As I'm nothing if not a purist for the type I like, the SuperDuke still fits my ideal motorcycle nearly perfectly. But it was time for a change: rather than being focused on street hooliganism and track performance, it was time to revamp for for dominating a commute, interchanges, merges, and carrying me to work with speed and efficiency. The range to do at least 160 miles before hitting reserve was a requirement as well, which the Superduke does neatly by virtue of getting 45+mpg on a casual commute. But getting a SuperDuke to push towards 50mpg is the ultimate pyhrric victory, like beating diabetes by replacing your blood with HFCS, and gives no satisfaction.

Although the world doesn't need another case study on the Faustian bargains you can make with highly paid marketing consultants to build a Brand Experience, I'm still going to drag you through the sordid details. After all, you can't talk about an S1000XR without talking about the rise of the ADV scene. The ADV scene contains wonderful mainstays of Long Way Around R1200GS cosplay, and riders who lovingly order stickers from around the world to affix to their dentist's thrones, while talking about how one day they're just gonna take off and ride, man. But the best marketing always contains a drop of truth, and that truth homeopathicically distributed through this bucket of marketing indiscretions is that in dirt riding you find clean, solid design principles. Horsepower is available in spades because you're only riding dirt to roost your buddies, refined long travel travel suspension to handle your poor life and line choices, an upright seating position that helps you target fixate off the shortest cliff, and light weight so that you spend less time begging your buddies to help you drag your bike back to the trail. And indeed, all of these things hold similar virtues on the street. Horsepower brings danger closer, faster. Light weight increases confidence and maneuverability, while refined suspension carries you through corners you never should have made, and an upright seating position lets you rise above the human concerns of traffic and dream of freedom. There's also the continuing drive towards electronic aids on the street, which overpriced ADV bikes wallow in as essential bullets in their marketing fluff, and is another entire debate I'll sidestep entirely by pointing out that those that disparage modern rider aids are moronic neo-luddites and those that welcome and spend money on them are the golden heralds of the new age. After all, there's something to be said for an electronic package that allows a terrible rider to maximize the speed at which they fling themselves off the shortest cliff their ADV inspired bike allows them to find, regardless of its impact on the secondary market.  

And this is the point where someone chimes in and says something about how the sport touring community has been doing this for years and the VFR750 was the pinnacle of the gentleman's sport touring ride and - well, they'd continue, but they need to take a break to check that they took today's medication, and by the time they get back from doing that, had a quick detour to the bathroom, they've forgotten what they were saying, the name of the person they were talking to, and are primarily preoccupied with if their suspenders are going to hold their pants up for the remainder of the trip home. And indeed, that's actually a pretty good reason to ignore the sport touring market entirely. The bikes are over weight, under suspended, slow to react, and most of the motorcycle manufacturers have realized that the entire marketplace is rapidly expiring, and have discontinued the bikes with no plans to continue onward.  As the stock and trade of a modern Renaissance motorcyclist is subtlety and wit, I have left only the barest implications that there might be a relationship between sport touring bikes and their riders - consider this a puzzle for the reader to explore. And while there is a value in the knowledge that occasionally bubbles to the surface in the sport touring scene, this is often akin to the dilemma that those of us who are friends with KLR riders face. While Kawasaki may have built a perfectly functional motorcycle out of pot metal, polyurethane, and the design principles of the Roman empire, these are probably not the staidly functional choices we should build a lifestyle around. After all, this sort of reasonable, responsible thought isn't going to Make America Great Again, and we can't allow the usefulness of a cheap sport tourer or a KLR to detract from the dream of propping up a failing American ideology via a last ditch set of poor decisions on financing, balloon payments, and wealth transfers to those that replaced their sense of decency, worth, and social responsibility with a bank account balance. 

Ahem, where was I? Oh, yes, the S1000XR. Let's have a picture: 

Well, I mean, you can read a thousand reviews that say things about the motorcycle. It goes fast! It has suspension bits that bounce both up and down at both ends! More buttons than a hipster's wardrobe! But I think that a refined reader of my words deserves better than that. So in the time honored tradition of terrible management across the board, I'm gonna shit sandwich this bike and we're gonna see what it's like to actually live with.  

The bike itself is a wonderfully aural experience - firing it up, it emits a raspy, lumpy idle, and if you put it in most powerful modes, it emits a burble coming off the throttle that reminds you of an F1 car blowing a gout of fire from its tailpipe. Slam up the gears without touching the clutch, and be rewarded by the flat static burst of the quickshifter, slam it down the gears without the clutch and appreciate rev-matched downshifts and the burble and pop of race bred DNA. At low RPM, the engine pulls smoothly and without drama, gathering itself to spring, and at 5k it begins to wail with a distinctly un-gentlemanly howl before fucking straight off into the territory of an ex-AMA racebike. If any government agencies besides the NSA are reading this, I'm happy to be the brave anonymous tipster on the clear violation of sound emissions in exchange for buyback rights to all motorcycles found in violation. Just send me an email, I'm sure you already have my information. And much like the effortless shifts of government direction in the interests of its controllers, the engine jumps to respond to any input change with the frictionless synchronization of a backroom deal. It's quite clear that there has been minimal change during the theft of the dark heart of the S1000RR to jam it into this new chassis. The dual direction quickshifter is also equally interesting, it works in a wide variety of configurations from seamless changes that are too good to be believed to the occasional misstep as you fail to shift strongly and positively enough and instead simply bounce your foot off the shift lever ineffectively. But it works well enough, often enough, that it will handle the majority of your downshifts, with only occasional reaches for the clutch when it's actually needed.  

And despite the size and wheelbase of the motorcycle, it steers into a corner with wild abandon, tempered only slightly by a clinical team of engineers debating the exact speed at which the human brain can handle a change in direction with some form of accuracy. With the amount of leverage courtesy of the wide bar, I found it somewhat over-sensitive. I fixed this by applying a bandsaw to the last few inches of the bars, reducing leverage to a more useful ratio, while also slimming the bike for lane splitting. In the ergonomic space, as I am a man who also once dabbled in the black tar heroin that is supermoto riding, I also appreciate that a high seat is offered, expanding the seating position out to more dirt bike inspired dimensions. There's a low seat, too, for the inseam challenged. The suspension is useful, but clearly a compromise point for BMW, as they are trying to reconcile the yin and yang of sport riding against the history they have build on cushioning the backsides of rich urban bikers to and from the local artisan coffee joint. As such, while road mode is nicely damped and supple, it lacks the appropriate rebound damping, meaning each bump is a novel exploration of the rebound waveform collapsing.  Dynamic mode, on the other hand, fails to handle potholes with grace, but is beautiful up a twisty road, with excellent sport riding settings. The single rider mode lacks enough preload in the back, but cheating it with the rider and luggage mode fixes the problem. Ironically, the right settings are all available, they're just mushed up in the wrong places. Rider plus luggage road mode on the front with rider only dynamic mode on the rear shock would probably be a great commuting setting, and rider plus luggage front and rear in dynamic mode with the compression settings from road mode would be a nearly perfect sane street pace ride. As it is, rider plus luggage in dynamic mode comes into it's own up a relatively smooth twisty road, and the 2 up preload setting makes you think your pillion has disappeared entirely.  

So all of those things are standouts about the bike - but there are a number of things that are marginal as well. The dark side of the frictionless, quick reving engine is essentially zero rotating mass, which means pulling away from a stop requires a significant fistful of revs, or the RPMs drop alarmingly as you let the clutch out. Expect to burn the clutch a bit. Also, the gear ratios are nearly unchanged if changed at all from the S1000RR, so you've got a frankly moronic 6 speed that's so tight ratio, the difference between the gears is marginal. It would be great to have a first gear that topped out at lower speed, and an overdrive 6th that dropped you into the nice spread of torque available at 4k. Of course, this is how BMW has been winning all the top gear roll-on competitions, so fair play to them for trouncing the competition there, just a pity it comes at the cost of real world usability. Essentially, I find myself operating the motorcycle like a 4 speed: First, 2nd, 4th, and 6th.  The difference between 5th and 6th is about 400RPM at 60mph, which makes the top gear feel pointless. It would have been wonderful if they had shortened first gear significantly, spread 2nd through 5th lightly, and then made 6th a very tall, true overdrive gear. And while we're talking about the clutch, you spend $19,250 on a bike, and BMW gifts you with a non-adjustable clutch lever. That, paired with the axial mount master cylinder, makes me wonder if they started developing the bike from the ground up, made it to the top, and just phoned it in for the levers, brake MC, and windshield, all of which are marginal at best. The windshield does a wonderful job of taking an otherwise smooth, reasonably quiet riding experience and throwing dirty air straight into your helmet, increasing buffeting and noise dramatically. If you stand up on the pegs and get into clean air the noise level drops approximately 60%, which is just staggering.  As such, I'm removing the windscreen and the windscreen mounts, which I anticipate will completely fix the problem. As I'm 5'11 with the legs of someone who's 5'5 and the torso of someone who's 6'5, I think my physical construction here is as much to blame as the bike's, but hey, I bought the damn thing, you have to listen to my gripes about it. That's just how the deal works. 

There is also the little point of the bike actually having linked brakes, which is a feature most reviewers don't even bother to mention. I first noticed it when the rear brake lever felt very inconsistent - well, as it turns out, that's because it uses the ABS pump to engage the rear brake when you apply the front brake. I think this actually contributes a large degree to the stability of the bike on the brakes in the corners and while upright, as a computer based engagement means when you apply the front brake, the bike can actually apply the rear brake very effectively based on speed, lean angle, front brake application, etc, to establish and exploit available rear traction to help control dive and smooth brake application. The system is so transparent that you wouldn't notice it unless you're riding the rear brake as you apply the front brake, where you'll notice the rear lever becomes oddly firm. It's nothing like the linked brake systems of the past, and I believe it contributes in a huge way to confidence applying brakes in a corner, especially when paired with the cornering ABS. Interestingly, despite this excellent functionality, the power of the brakes is somewhat disappointing, as I feel like it takes a significant amount of force to get the bike to really engage the front brakes. The braking power is there, it just requires more force than I would like. I'll probably fit a Brembo master cylinder to address this particular issue - I'd imagine this is a place where they skimped a little, because it's acceptable to reduce front braking power when you're building an "ADV" bike. 

There's also the obvious other caveats, that this bike simply doesn't work in real offroad riding. You can absolutely fire-trail it, double track, it'll handle dirt roads just fine, but it's not going to handle true singletrack. But no one's buying it for that, either. It'll go to Alaska and back no problem, but you're an idiot or a glutton for punishment if you want to ride this thing anywhere serious offroad. I purchased the OEM engine crash bars for it, which amusingly, require taking a dremel to at least one fairing to fit. You can get away without dremeling the left fairing, but the right one it is a necessity - I'm assuming this is some sort of "you're going to drop it, you asshole" indoctrination.  

But it's time for the last slice of bread: This bike is legitimately amazing. The complaints that I raise are almost entirely nitpicks, and easily fixed by throwing a few hundred extra dollars at the bike. Some might balk at spending another thousand bucks or so to fix these sort of problems, but everyone's gonna have a different opinion on most of the things here, with the exception of the non-adjustable clutch lever, which is a very odd oversight in a premium bike like this. As it is, I'll probably just make something that fits and uses a Brembo lever to match the master cylinder I'll end up buying. The bike as a whole package is exactly what I wanted: A ballistically quick, well suspended, upright steed with top shelf electronics, that is equally at home lane splitting home at 8PM, tearing up a twisty mountain road solo or 2 up, or strapping a pile of luggage on to go out camping for the weekend. It nets 40mpg under casual use, pushing range to an easy 160 miles, the TC lets you slide enough to have a good time, and you can click it off the fly to perform wheelies for the kids or impressionable middle aged men. Throw a topbox on it, enjoy the invisible luxury of aping the responsibility of the sport touring crowd while riding a bike that will do 0-100 in the time it takes the officer to figure out you're not over the hill. It's the perfect bike to rack up thousands of guilt free, fast, safe miles on. It'll also probably make fools of arrogant sportbike riders when I take it to the track. It's a very worthy companion to the SuperDuke for those who, like me, are willing to support the American way of life on a financing plan. As they say, if you can pretend to have the means, I highly recommend it.