BMW F650 GS - Good vibrations!
Written: Aug 08 '06 (Updated Dec 10 '06)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Reliability: |
 |
|
| Comfort: |
 |
|
| Handling And Control: |
|
|
| Quality and Craftsmanship: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Reliability, handling, looks, easy/cheap to maintain.
Cons: Vibrations, clunky gearbox, top speed.
The Bottom Line: A great, reasonably price, middle of the range bike. Excellent for short commutes or serious offroad expeditions.
|
|
|
| Raf_K's Full Review: 2004 BMW F650 GS |
I have bought the BMW F650 GS as my first bike about 2 months ago. Despite my relative lack of experience riding other bikes, I think I have become well informed enough on the subject of the F650 to write a brief review on it.
This model has been virtually unchanged since it first came out in 2000 – the 2006 model has had some minor, mainly cosmetic changes.
I was surprised enough to find out that the engine is not a BMW original, but is manufactured by German engine-maker Rotax. It is a single-cylinder, four valve engine which is also shared with a model of Aprilia trail bike (the name of which slips my mind).
Pros:
This bike handles superbly in city-traffic: the fuel tank is located under the seat which lowers the center of gravity, and also helps keep its profile narrow, thus enabling you to weave past lanes of stopped cars without too much trouble (the wide handlebars can somewhat cancel out this advantage, though). A possible disadvantage of the unusual location of the fuel tank is that there’s no space left for storage under the seat.
I bought this bike with a longer-term plan of preparing myself for a long overland trip sometime in the future (not necessarily on this bike); as expected, I hear it handles even better on rough terrain. I will have to update you on that after I take one of BMW’s offroad courses which they offer here in the UK (funnily, the opportunities to go offroad in densely-populated England are somewhat few and far between).
As a newly qualified rider, there are two important additional aspects which have drawn me towards this model: firstly, because it is a medium-sized bike at 652cc, and because BMWs are not frequent targets of bike-thefts the insurance premium was a pretty tolerable £640 (around U$1200 – pretty cheap here if you are a new rider and living in bike-theft ridden London). I was told that another reason why insurance premiums are relatively low is that BMW bike owners are more sensible people who use their bikes as tools to get them from A to B rather than speed freaks. I think I’d fall in between those two categories!
Another good point is that the fuel economy is quite good and I can get around 170 miles on a tank. I think this works out at 45 mpg on heavy traffic. All in all a this was a great move for me from the horrible London public transport system to a fairly cheap to maintain bike.
The F650 also scores highly on comfort; because you are seating upright you can see quite far ahead above the cars, and because the bike is fairly “thin”, your legs are not wide open and thus you don’t tend to get splitting pains on the inside of your thighs after a while as you do with some larger bikes. The downside of this is that it is fairly high, and if you are 5ft9 like me you can just about comfortably rest your feet on the ground, and getting on/off the bike takes a bit of practice for someone with “short” legs like me. The F650 Dakar is actually 4 inches taller than the standard GS, so that would put it off limits for most people under 6ft. There are other nice little extras like heated grips and ABS, which can give you even less to worry about and let you concentrate on your riding.
BMW bikes are also well-known for being fairly easy to maintain and not give too many problems in their lifetime. Servicing it in authorised BMW dealerships can cost a small fortune, but the services are quite easy to perform and any competent workshop can do it for you at a fraction of the price. I bought this bike with 23500 miles on the clock and it is entirely trouble-free, having been regularly serviced.
Finally, this bike just looks awesome, with it high front mud-guard and rear deflector; it definitely looks like it can take on the roughest terrain, but like I said, I’ll give an update on that later…
Cons:
OK, so I have to admit the bike has a few shortcomings.
The most annoying to me so far seems to be the vibrations. When you pass about 4500 rpm the whole thing starts vibrating and at 6000 rpm it becomes pretty unbearable so that you have to work up through the gears quite quickly. I am told that this is due to the fact that it is a single-cylinder engine, but my lack of mechanical knowledge prevents me from knowing the reasons behind this.
Likewise, its motorway performance is very mediocre – it struggled to reach a top speed of 90 mph, and when it did the whole thing just didn’t feel too safe. Then again, its aerodynamics are not those of a super-fast racing bike.
The battery alternator is also located in a bit of an awkward spot, next to the air vent fin by your right thigh, and it gets VERY HOT. It can feel really uncomfortable on a hot summer day. Again, this problem can apparently be circumvented by changing its location, but if you’re a layman like me you’re probably better off leaving it alone.
Finally, more of an annoyance again, is that the gearbox clunks a lot between N and 1st gear, and between 1st and 2nd. I have heard this complaint from several other riders so I guess it’s normal, although it’d be nice if the gear changes were smoother.
Overall
As with every bike, you must know what use you will put it for. If it’s commuting within traffic-packed streets or for offroad adventures, you probably can’t beat this bike, as it’s just the right size, maintenance-free and cheap to insure. If, on the other hand, you plan to use a bike for long road trips, you would probably better stay away from this model altogether.
I’d still give this bike a solid 4 out of 5, although I’ll probably want to move to a larger model for my next bike, in 2-3 years. Until then, this will definitely provide me with good fun, as well as being a great tool to get me to and from work.
There’s a cool community dedicated to this bike on http://www.f650.com where every conceivable FAQ on this model has been written. It is a wealth of information for owners of this model.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 5200
Condition: Used
Model Year: 2004
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Raf_K
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Member: Rafael K
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 49 members
About Me:
Back after a long work-inflicted absence.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.