Bavarian Bruiser:
Part Two
By BLAKE CONNER
BMW IS finally
ready to release
the long-delayed
new "K" biKe
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BMW
'II give BMW a lot of credit: The company cares about its customers. BMW
may have delayed the long-awaited
release of its new ultrapowerful fourcylinder K 1200 S, but that has to be
better than some sort of recall fiasco. When
I rode the bike almost a year ago, I questioned whether or not the bike was
production-ready. Apparently, BMW asked
that same question and decided to bravely
swallow its pride and further refine the bike
before releasing it to the public.
The K 1200 5 is new territory for the
Munich-based company. It is only the second four-cylinder motorcycle engine that
the company has produced for production
I
42 JULY 13, 2005 • CYCLE NEWS
(the other
being
the
infamous,
longitudinally
mounted, flying brick). This
transverse-mounted inline four-cylinder
motor is a complete departure from anything else the company has created to this
point, so there were bound to be some
teething problems.
The primary issue with the bike a year
ago was an unacceptable amount of snatch
from the fuel-injection system. I wrote at
the time that the injection seemed to suffer the most between 2000 and 4500 rpm,
and that the bike
was constantly searching for optimal
fuel delivery. I also noted at the time that
the bike reacted most negatively when trying to settle the chassis on the throttle
midcorner, unsettling the bike enough to
make it understeer and run wide.
So, what has BMW done to rectify these
problems, and is it any better? BMW has
been scrambling to solve these issues and
felt comfortable enough to relaunch the
bike to the American press at an event in
Sausalito, California, in late May.
