Going back to a 1200....

[Arsey]

That is 100% opposite of my experience. Based on experience rather than reading forums...

So you’re saying that the latest 1250 has the best paint finish and general build quality of any GS ever made ? I assume you own a 1250 , to base your experience on,rather than just read forums ?

 

[Apex]

I have to agreed, that 1200 in black looks the business.

They do. But only when clean. I think they look awful when dirt laden. You should’ve bought an orange bike anyway Nobody would ever know my thinking on this though, because I never share my opinions.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Urban Rider]

The paint quality on the 1250 is nowhere near as good as earlier models. My 2015 GSA was used numerous times with and without a SW Motech tank bag and never had any issues... I’ve had x2 tank panels on the 1250 and both needed replacing due to poor paint finish. Yesterday I looked at a number of 1250s (all Rallye but both GS and GSA versions) and saw at least another 3 with paint defects at the same place as mine and all were either 19 or 20 plate bikes..... Not expected from a bike that costs the best part of £20k!!!

 

[Spareparts]

Who says lower power and less tech needs to be = "inferior"? Inferior in terms of top trumps and "my willy's bigger than your willy" perhaps.

If a bike performs well, is made well, handles well and does everything you want of it, then who is any other person to tell the OP or any of the rest of us "inferior machine" shod riders that we are somehow on "inferior" bikes? Arrogant, spareparts, arrogant.

You laugh all you want but having traded a much faster, smoother bike for my lumpy old 2016GSA a few years ago. I haven't ever looked back once with any regrets because it still has some of the charm and character which seems to have been all but ironed out of the 1250 in the same way they've made the S1000R undeniably top of it's class but oh so dull compared with Yamaha's Mt10SP o Aprilia's Tuono V4. It does everything I want of a bike and so competently, so reliably and so well, I, for one, couldn't give a monkeys if the new one is faster, smoother or any other "...er".

It's not the first time any of us have heard that 1250 shiftcams are noisier and these boxer lumps, when warm sound enough like a blacksmith's forge on overtime anyway. A mate of mine, a long time ADV bike man and very experienced off roader with many thousands of off road riding under his belt recently changed his bike after being invited to a bmw off road event in Spain last year as a guest of one of their test riders. He road the 1250 and the 1200 and whilst he loved the 1250's electronics off road and it's extra straight line haul on-road, he bought a 1200GSA when it came time to change his old ADV bike. He could easily have afforded the 1250GSA. By his reckoning, the 1200 was all the bike it needed to be or that he needed and he is a better rider than probably most people lining up with cash for a new 1250. To his mind, his last gen 1200 was so much better value, loaded up to the gills and in reality lost out nothing in smiles per miles, it wasn't worth the extra for the 1250. Maybe if I was buying a used one in a few years I could be tempted over, but having ridden the latest models from BMW, like him, I was definitively of the mind that the 1200 GSA is still a mind blowingly competent bike by any measure. It's a wonder I'm still here at all what with the soggy old rubbish suspension of my terrible 1200 not having spat me off on the last corner I tried navigating, not to mention struggling to overtake all those cars that are so much faster than my lardy old GSA lump!

For all that, I wish everyone going the 1250 route every pleasure in their ownership and would never presume to belittle them for their choices.

Read what I wrote, slowly , one more time before replying. The 1200 is inferior to the 1250 in terms of torque, power, and economy. Objective technical fact. Not opinionated. Not arrogant either.

You/your friend raises the issue of VALUE. Ie, that dirty topic of money vs performance/overall package. On that topic, I shan’t disagree: a used 1200 at c.60% of the price of a new 1250 is certainly more than 60% the bike. But we weren’t talking value.

What the OP was talking about as his rationale for changing was engine noise and poor paint quality on the tank. Engine noise on a boxer twin is never going to be sonorous, and how perfect do you expect the paint quality on the plastics of an adv bike to be? If not perfect, just repaint the offending tank cover for less than £50.

The 1200 was a fine bike. I enjoyed both of my previous 1200s and they were excellent bikes that I toured all over Europe on. But to suggest one downgrade from a 1250 to 1200 on the basis of engine noise and tank plastics paint quality is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

 

[Urban Rider]

Read what I wrote, slowly , one more time before replying. The 1200 is inferior to the 1250 in terms of torque, power, and economy. Objective technical fact. Not opinionated. Not arrogant either.

You/your friend raises the issue of VALUE. Ie, that dirty topic of money vs performance/overall package. On that topic, I shan’t disagree: a used 1200 at c.60% of the price of a new 1250 is certainly more than 60% the bike. But we weren’t talking value.

What the OP was talking about as his rationale for changing was engine noise and poor paint quality on the tank. Engine noise on a boxer twin is never going to be sonorous, and how perfect do you expect the paint quality on the plastics of an adv bike to be? If not perfect, just repaint the offending tank cover for less than £50.

The 1200 was a fine bike. I enjoyed both of my previous 1200s and they were excellent bikes that I toured all over Europe on. But to suggest one downgrade from a 1250 to 1200 on the basis of engine noise and tank plastics paint quality is, quite frankly, ridiculous.

Absolute bollox......

You should probably go back to my original post and read it again. Particularly the part where I state “I enjoyed it but never really gelled with it” add to that the other issues and you haven’t heard the engine noise or the clutch bearing noise, read my post above and you’ll see the paint issues are not exclusive to my bike... It’s poor quality - period not what I’d expect from a £20k bike!!!
In terms of build quality, in my opinion the predecessor to the 1250 is a better bike...
Enjoy your 1250, hope you have a reasonable engine and your paintwork doesn’t need fixing... I shall take comfort in the fact that, for me, the 1200 finish and build quality is superior...