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Recommend a good touring bike

I'd kinda think about the type of touring you want to do. Hotel vs camping. If camping you'll have to take way more crap and ride into and find campsites.

I can't really comment on the high end bikes. I'm in more of the sub $5000 and just go category.

Here is a link to my Canada trip last summer. BC,Jasper, Banff, Kootney, Glacier NP, Yellowstone. Totally awesome trip.
https://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=538160
 
WorldSBK said:
Coming from the track you may like this lightweight BMW F 800 GT. Don't think you can find it new though :

View attachment 531499
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I second the F800GT suggestion. Lightweight, (about) 55 miles per gallon, heated grips, multiple seat options, parallel twin design, belt drive. Solid bike and still fun in the twisties.

I bought a 2013 version for a song a couple years ago and I still love it. It does sound like a damn sewing machine with the stock pipe but that's easily remedied...
 
WorldSBK said:
Coming from the track you may like this lightweight BMW F 800 GT. Don't think you can find it new though
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At least you can try before you buy. I think the BMW 360 degree parallel twin is the least pleasant modern multi-cylinder engine.

Their newer F850 & F900 with their 270-degree parallel twin should be much nicer. The closest current model seems to be the F900XR, though it's chain rather than belt drive.
 
davidji said:
All good Qs. Another good one is "will you ride at night?" I always do on road trips, but it seems like some riders don't. If you do, cornering lights are huge. I've only had them on one bike so far, but it's hard to go back.
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Another good question!

Personally, I found the cornering lights on my Multistrada to be pretty useless. Lean into a corner blind... and then the lights turn on to show you what you now can't possibly avoid hitting or riding over. I could see them being more useful on long sweepers, but on tight mountain roads (think: Highway 9) the Multistrada's cornering lights were useless.

What is useful at LED headlights. If I were going to buy a touring bike, LED lights would be a requirement for me. The low beams on the Multi were better than the best high beams on any previous bike I've owned. The high beams on the Multi were like turning on the Sun :laughing
 
fubar929 said:
What is useful at LED headlights. If I were going to buy a touring bike, LED lights would be a requirement for me. The low beams on the Multi were better than the best high beams on any previous bike I've owned. The high beams on the Multi were like turning on the Sun :laughing
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I love the LED headlights on my Africa Twin. Except with the sharp cutoff between light and dark, it seems like you're even blinder around curves at night, than for example the stock conventional headlight on my R1200R.

Not long ago I had a wake up call with a couple of deer in the road on a curve near home on the Africa Twin. Installed a Motodemic adaptive headlight on the R1200R, and on the same curve it was a night and day difference.

That's the only cornering light setup I've ridden in the dark. That's one feature that's hard to try on a demo ride.

I still expect to tour on the Africa Twin, and ride it at night. Hopefully soon after the shutdown ends.
 
My "touring" bikes have been Radian 600, Hawk GT, VFR750, and the K-1200RS.

Coincidentally, those have been my non touring bikes as well.

The Radian never did an overnighter.

The Hawk did several, once camping. But mostly just long day trips.

The VFR did several camping trips.

The RS did some hotel overnighting.

The singular problem with the Hawk was that I took it to the Grand Canyon in March and it was probably down in to the 40's that night riding back to camp. Don't think I can blame that on the bike, though.

The VFR got the most miles on it. Utah, Colorado, Mexico, Mammoth, and Laguna runs.

Fabulous machine, even when the thermostat got finicky in Mexico (just had to baby it in traffic, on the road it was fine).

The RS is a rock on the road. So stable. Imagine those pictures of those huge waves crashing in to those lone, stoic lighthouses. It's like that. Imagine a sentence with more uses of the word "those".
 
Met a couple of guys from Germany while overnighting in Mulege who were touring on a pair of Vmax's. Proves you can "tour" on anything.
 
OP, if this is your first touring bike I'd really try to avoid the larger displacement and start on a Ninja 250 with a nice set of soft bags.

:thumbup
 
I know everybody says the FJR is a great bike. I sold mine after less than a year. Sure, it handles great but it’s still a huge relatively heavy bike. Sold it and bought a CB500X. Completely different bike I know, but much more enjoyable.

I’m not necessarily recommending the CB 500 X, just at the smaller lighter bike is much more enjoyable to ride in my opinion.
 
antwon412 said:
I know everybody says the FJR is a great bike. I sold mine after less than a year. Sure, it handles great but it’s still a huge relatively heavy bike. Sold it and bought a CB500X. Completely different bike I know, but much more enjoyable.

I’m not necessarily recommending the CB 500 X, just at the smaller lighter bike is much more enjoyable to ride in my opinion.
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Agree but another factor is how the bike wears its weight. While shopping for a big tourer, the FJR felt top heavy to me and a pain to maneuver slow small incremental movements. I wanted to like it but it just didn't work for me.

When on the RT, even though heavier on paper, the bike had a lower center of gravity and moving it around for parking, etc felt much easier to me.
 
I'll add something...

If you're used to riding at the track, it can be tempting to ride hard on the street. And I don't mean riding in an "OWNS9" kind of way, but more so that a sport-oriented machine can be counter productive if your mission is to kick back and enjoy the trip. If the goal is smell the roses, it can be awful hard to do that when you've got a bike that wants to be ridden harder.

Sometimes the underpowered stuff makes for a great touring mount for just that reason... Give yourself enough power and brakes to navigate the roads, but not so much that there is temptation to turn every cross country trip into a day railing twisties.
 
And that being said, I wish I would have still had my VFR when I did my 8000 mile month long trip across the USA.... Would have loved to ride a couple of those roads harder ;)
 
I think a lot of this comes down to:
1. How far is far and for how many days.
2. Personal preference.

Under the personal preference part, I slow down when I'm a couple states away from home base. A simple low side when you are riding alone that screws the bike up can cause a lot of inconvenience and money. So reliability and stability mean more to me.

Under the how far for how long... I had 3 VFRs and put probably close to 200,000 miles on the three of them. Great weekend bikes. Then I got a K1200RS, and from there went to two FJRs.

NO COMPARISON. Two weeks out, in the rain, at night, looking for a motel and you're exhausted.... The FJR or a BMW GS or R 1200 or similar is very much your friend.

This isn't to say one can't ride to say New York on a 500cc bike, or the world's best Wee Strom, or a Ninja 250, whatever. It can all be a challenge and fun. But if I'm going to spend two weeks riding the Western States, I much prefer the larger bikes.

Lot's a Harleys out there in Nebraska, and I can see why. But that's probably fodder for another thread :rofl
 
Many folks fail to realize that there is weather outside of California. When you're touring, you'll experience weather. Nothing makes riding in weather easier then a big powerful faired machine.
Give me cruise control, heated grips, electric windshield, fairings, a comfy seat and a smooth powerful engine and I can eat up miles through all kinds of weather.
 
WWWobble said:
This isn't to say one can't ride to say New York on a 500cc bike, or the world's best Wee Strom, or a Ninja 250, whatever. It can all be a challenge and fun. But if I'm going to spend two weeks riding the Western States, I much prefer the larger bikes.
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And that's actually exactly what I did.. Ninja 250 from NC to CA/OR, and back again.

I wouldn't ever do it (on that bike) again... :laughing

dravnx said:
Many folks fail to realize that there is weather outside of California. When you're touring, you'll experience weather. Nothing makes riding in weather easier then a big powerful faired machine.
Give me cruise control, heated grips, electric windshield, fairings, a comfy seat and a smooth powerful engine and I can eat up miles through all kinds of weather.
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^ and THAT is the reason why.

The Ninja 250 happily went across the country, but my body started to say "No." somewhere in South Dakota, with 80mph limits and a 20mph headwind. It was absolutely miserable, and I would have paid good money to jump in the shittiest looking car that went past me.

Long trips wear you down... The big bikes and fairings/windscreens prevent that from happening. It isn't just the weather (rain etc), but the constant turbulence, headwinds, hot days, frozen days etc... it really starts to take its toll after a few weeks in the saddle.

You can tolerate a lot of bikes for a couple days... if you slow down, then even longer... but when you really want to make time, and do it consistently, then it gets really hard to beat a designated touring machine with full wind protection.

Think carefully about the kind of ride you want to do. Will you be out for weeks at a time? If not, one of the sportier bikes with less protection would probably work just fine.

If it had a bigger gas tank, I think I might really enjoy something like the big VFR1200F. They didn't sell well, but are incredibly high quality bikes. Shame about the damned tank size though.
 
Kestrel said:
Long trips wear you down... The big bikes and fairings/windscreens prevent that from happening. It isn't just the weather (rain etc), but the constant turbulence, headwinds, hot days, frozen days etc... it really starts to take its toll after a few weeks in the saddle.

You can tolerate a lot of bikes for a couple days... if you slow down, then even longer... but when you really want to make time, and do it consistently, then it gets really hard to beat a designated touring machine with full wind protection.
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Or, you could just embrace the suffering.


I've toured on all sorts of platforms, Ninja 250's all the way up to St1300's and everything in between. I thoroughly enjoyed every trip. Each trip was so vastly different than the previous. This is probably why I go through so many bikes... Each bike provides a somewhat different experience/ level of suffering.

If you ride motorcycles, you like to suffer. If you don't agree with me:
A: You have not yet embraced the fact that you love to suffer.
B: You ride a ultra couch touring bike every day and might as well drive a smart car. :ride
 
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