Having had a BMW rear drive that failed twice I will never darken their path again. Give me Yamaha reliability any day of the week over BMW.
Those were some dark days for der Motorwerks. Made so much worse, because of their denial of any issue, later found out by Paul Glaves of Iron Butt Association lore. He discovered a bearing in the final drive was not properly adjusted at the factory, and his findings held weight with the riding community, having been a BMW-certified master mechanic.
Those IBR loyalists loathe to leave BMW actually entered the Iron Butt Rally, packing a complete final drive assembly to swap out on the road, should their bike grenade its motivation-connection while bonus-gathering and criss-crossing the countryside. There were more than one IBR entrant who did so, and at least one for whom it paid off.
At the same time, several others of the BMW faithful said "screw it", and simply switched to the Honda GoldWing. I believe one of them was Tom Loftis, another bonafide Big Dog in the tight-knit circle of Iron Butt finishers.
That in itself was more than quite remarkable, because you could hardly find more devoted loyalists to the propeller, than those who had ridden and finished multiple IBRs on those bikes. The howling and roaring on the ldrlist was something to behold, and went on for a couple of years at least.
I've never owned a BMW shaftie (only the 650 single, twice), but could actually see myself on a GS 1250 these days, for adventuring. I want to ride with Jim Hyde and his RawHyde adventure tours sometime. (The revised and reborn Africa Twin is making big waves in the adventure community, too.)
