TMW - 12-4-2004 at 11:02 AM
This is Tim's report on the Baja 1000 BMW bike. It is a BMW 1200 that weights about 500 lbs. I'm glad they didn't fall down.
>From: Tim Morton
> Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 07:32:20 -0800
> To: Anthony Tellier
> Subject: Re: BMW RECAP?
>
> The BMW we rode was totally AWESOME!
> It was really slow over the whoops and rough stuff but on the smoother
> dirt roads it was incredible. Even tight twisty turns are easy and
> there are even places that are easier and faster to ride the BMW than an
> xr650, and I don't mean just wide open.
> Fuel injection with 100HP is really amazing. Very little shifting and
> really smooth.
> It was easy to ride down the final stair steps into La Paz, way easier
> than I thought it would be. It was a bit scary with silt because we
> ended up back in the cars and there was more silt than I was expecting.
> It's a big bike you don't want to get in trouble on and a few of the
> silt areas snuck up on me. It's not like an xr where you can easily
> ditch off the road to avoid silt.
> Jonah did really well from the Start to Puertocitos and was about 8
> minutes ahead of our ETA. At one point (the Diablo high road) Jonah
> said he looked at the dash and it read 193K, and he wasn't even in top
> gear. The bike was definitely fast!
> Donatoni took it to Ignacio.
> In the Ignacio pit the BMW mechanics changed the wheels, filter, and put
> on lights and Jimmy got on to take off, but it wouldn't start.
> Apparently the bikes computer went into an "anti-theft" mode and shut
> everything down.
> It was a good thing we had all the "right" people at that pit as none of
> us would have ever figured out how to make it run. They had to rob a
> computer and key ignition off another GS (a very difficult job) we had
> as a spare. The bike was in the pit for 3.5 hours.
> Before the Ignacio pit we had a shot at finishing before the first car
> or at least getting passed by just a few of them. But leaving the
> Ignacio pit in the cars added a lot more time to our average.
> Oh well, you can't expect perfection with a bike that was built just to
> test some different parts.
> The bike was really fun to ride, I want one! And I can't figure out GS
> owners who are afraid of their bikes in sand and off-road, our bike was
> great!