BMW F800 Test Ride

Today I had a test ride on a BMW F800 ST from Balderston's in Peterborough.

It's a great bike, small and light which makes it fun to ride. Powerful and comfortable which should make it good for touring and it's meant to be very economical which will make it good for commuting. It's the best all rounder I ridden so far.

The core of the bike was very good. The engine was very smooth and the belt drive was really impressive. The engine was also very quite which I liked.

Handling was pretty good, I'm quicker through corners on my Deauville but thats just because I know how that bike handles where as the F800 was a new bike, I would get quicker as I became more experienced with it.

The riding position was very comfortable at first but after an hour I found my palms were starting to hurt.

The bike feels small and it made filtering through traffic very easy.

Overall I liked it but that's not to say there weren't faults but all the faults I found were things which can be fixed with after market parts.

The biggest issue were the Mirrors, I could not find a positions for them or for me that gave me a good view of the road behind me, the stalks that the mirrors are mounted on need to be about 2 inches longer but on the plus side there was no buzz from the mirrors regardless of the speed.

The second issue was the fairing, it protected me upto about 70mph but beyond I had to duck down to remain comfortable. It's good enough for single carriageway roads but a long Motorway journey might prove uncomfortable. I think a screen with a flip-up edge should sort that problems.

There is also one unknown factor with this bike, it was only released last year and the engine was designed for it so both the bike and engine have not yet had real world long distance usage yet. The highest mileage F800 the salesman had seen was 6,000 in a little over a year. I'm doing that distance in 3 months and he's not heard of one with the 25,000 miles I expect to put on it in 1 year. Servicing is every 6000 miles which means I would need to get the bike back to Peterborough every 3-4 months.

Dispite the faults I found, there are all minor and the bike is definitely on my list of possible replacements for my current bikes when I decide to get rid of Big Red.