Marc's F800GS

Most everybody knows this, but I thought I'd give it a try myself. Yesterday the weather was fairly nice (high 50F's) so I rode to the local off-road vehicle park, turned off the ABS, and rode a circuit.

It's a pretty easy area with some sections of heavily wooded Pine, a seasonal creek/river that runs through the middle and provides deep sand, and a few quite steep 50' banks that are fun to climb or descend. Lots of twisty trails and sharp turns, lots downed limbs and logs, and loose sand and rocks. Some moderate hills with climbs/descents of varying degree of difficulty.

The area near the parking lot gets the most use, so it has lots of whoops. I noticed these things immediately:

1. The F800GS is way too heavy to be a dirtbike. I knew that already, but it's so capable on a dirt road that it would lead you to think you could just blast off up the bank and into the trees. Not!
2. It's stock gearing is WAY too tall. The tight stuff requires first gear only, and if you grab second and get it above 5k rpm you'd better hope you don't encounter anything rough (that a real dirtbike would just float over) because...
3. The suspension sucks for off-road. I weigh about 175lbs with all my riding gear on, and the suspension is too harsh when I'm just creeping along (or on the pavement), and way too soft when trying to ride at what would be a very modest speed for a real dirtbike.
4. The throttle is way too sensitive to hold steady when the bike is pitching back and forth from the rough terrain, and finally...
5. The F800GS has WAY too much HP for a dirtbike. Combine that with a sensitive throttle and it's hard to maintain a steady speed (measured by engine RPM) and all too easy to spin up the rear wheel if you goose it.

For the record, I was running Pirelli Scorpions at the recommended pressures (32psi front, 36psi rear). Normally, I would have dropped the pressure to about 22psi on both wheels, but I wanted to see what it was like with 'normal' tire pressures.

It would climb some very steep, rough hills but only by starting with a lot of speed at the bottom and using lots of technique. Real knobbies at 22psi would have made a big difference in the deep sand, and on the steep hills, but would have done nothing to address complaints 1-5 above...

I normally ride off-road standing up the majority of the time. When I tried sitting down on the F800GS, of course I had to slow way down, and then it was a lot better, but boringly slow and uncomfortable due to the suspension and weight.

[As a baseline for what I wrote above -- I've been riding motorcycles for 50 years, mostly dirtbikes, but lately mostly street. I desert raced competitively in D-37 during the 70's, and rode trials (with two top-10 finishes in the US Nationals in '88 and '90), and was an MSF instructor from '85 to '96.]