The All New LIQUID COOLED R1200GS threadfest

Well........Then.

I think it perfectly reasonable to question if the added cost/complexity of a new technology is worth the added benefit, if any, it may have. Are LED headlights really that much better to justify all the extra crap.

Well, I guess yes.
Halogen and incandescent lights in general generate way to much energy loss and not enough light output. I see so many cars on the road with single low-beam, often no break lights working at all...having said that I still recall the first generation HID (the latest and greatest back then) on the 7 series BMW and how expensive they were to replace. Ouch!

He probably uses it to make himself feel superior and special - he's neither.

Maybe you just got a lemon. Everyone builds one now and then and they shouldn't be confused with a beta.

Technophobia or neoluddism, check out Wikipedia, one who embraces neoluddism is by definition a luddite(?)
Whatever, I just wrote my dealer to get on the list and I have also, and this was the tough part, informed my SO

If that was the case my local dealer didn't mention it. Only X-tended warranty I was offered was via 3rd party.

It's a warranty that you can only buy from BMW but it's underwritten externally as in it isn't an extended manufacturers warranty but more an insurance. The bad thing about them is that all repairs and servicing must be carried out by a dealer where the manufacturers warranty you can get servicing done by any shop so long as it is to the book and genuine parts. This is the case in the EU anyway NA might be different. Not everything is covered either and there tends to be a lot of get outs.

I've never heard about it if they do/did. There was some guy that kept a record of all the expenses he incurred putting 100,000 miles on one and it equalled a little more than the price of the bike when he bought it new. He didn't include fuel or scheduled services in the total either. I'll see if I can find the blog & post a link.

If they do offer a 100k warranty, it would have to be uber pricey or extremely limited.

Noticed on the International BMW Motorrad site (not USA) 3 different equipment variants.
- Touring
- Dynamik
- Offroad

They have the numbers wrong- according to them, regular halogen lights are the most efficient, which is false. Currently LEDs provide the most light per watt of consumed power. Just compare LED, CFL and halogen lights in your local hardware store. One optimist in Vendors rates his 20W light at 3600lm, making it 180lm/W :)
However LEDs are much more sensitive to heat, and must be cooled. On one of the pictures of the BMW light assembly a massive ribbed heatsink can be seen on the bottom. It is possible that the fan doesn't draw an outside air, it simply circulates the air inside the assembly to transfer some heat to the front glass.

Yes, then we can avoid all the threads about people complaining their halogen bulbs burned out and they broke the spring clip trying to replace it. You have to admit, anything's an improvement on that!

Yeap and it showed up on the US website for one day, but seems now to be gone. Typically option packages are different in the U.S. from Europe and elsewhere, so we'll see. I'll take mine loaded!

Thanks for the explanation.

Interesting info on the gear ratios. Clearly the result of the more powerful engine characteristics.
Tie this to the fatter tire profile both front and rear....seems to me this new GS is being tailored more toward paved road riding than any of the earlier versions.

This probable smart as most GS buyer ride pavement ...and 125 hp vs 115 has little benefit in the dirt.

Amen Brother!!!!!!!! However, BMW needed to address the masses (80% of the riders who want/but never use the HP they already have, but need more HP for bragging rights at the local hangout). IMHO, the only benefit of the WC's increased HP is for 6th gear "roll-on" 70/80 to 120MPH "straight line" momentary blasts on the wide open freeway, which the masses typically love to do and equate to "speed". But they wont be able to use that added power on canyon roads or in the dirt

mkletecka, why do yo say such (highlighted in bold)?

regards,

Have there been any reports giving scientific assessment of the actual performance of the different types of new headlights?

LED lights are currently very new and very trendy.
They certainly seem a good idea as auxiliary lights or day running lights ~ though as DRL's they might be the better for being slightly yellow-tinged.
For those sorts of applications they seem good value, despite the automotive LED technology being in its primitive infancy.

Remember when HID's first came in : all the trendiness [and high costs] and hype suggesting that they were so much better than the old simple [and cheap] Quartz Halogen bulbs?

And still the un-trendy, un-fan-cooled, un-ballast-boxed QH lights are performing well.
Yes, a 35 watt HID bulb puts out twice the number of lumens than a typical QH high beam ~ but a bi-xenon HID bulb is struggling [thanks to its shielding and reflector design] to outperform a good QH in real-life performance terms i.e. in how much light is projected forward in a useful pattern in the middle distance where you need it.

The LED headlights put out a lot of lumens per watt of electricity . . . but how much illumination performance on high beam do they provide? It would be nice to know.
Once we see objective evidence of performance, then we can set that against their various other pro's and con's, and make a reasoned decision on whether to buy or not.
No agonising for fashionistas, of course . . . they will buy LED's as soon as available.

Could be the definition of "canyon road". Or "twisty" for that matter. What people here (and on Youtube) often think as "twisty" is for me a plain joke. I wouldn't even characterize those roads as "curvy" or "not straight" ...

Everything where I can ride faster on a GS than on a WR250X is not twisty ...

But that might just be me.

You sure about that? How many posts are there on ADV about burned out QH bulbs and broken spring clips? But hey the good thing is the LEDs are optional so you don't have to get them....so your concerns about being trendy are solved!

Yep, EJ-92606, I am talking about QH headlights' performance ~ that is, how well they illuminate the road.

The question of how long a QH bulb lasts, is of course relevant and important.
For most bikes on the road, a QH bulb should last 400 - 800 hours or so.
That's quite a helluva lot of miles . . . shall we say 10,000 to 40,000 riding miles, before you have to dig into your pocket for a $5 ~ $10 replacement? (Assuming you haven't troubled to carry a spare bulb in your kit.)

Now, we have all heard of a certain unnamed twin-cylindered bike which can sometimes manage to blow QH bulbs in surprisingly short order.
Perhaps I am being unjust, but I tend to blame that bike's designers for the short bulb life (rather than blame the bulbs themselves) ~ somehow, by some means of electro-trickery, they have managed to sabotage the normal bulb life expectancy.

Now again, if they can sabotage the humble and simple QH bulb . . . can we trust them not to sabotage the "normally expected to be far longer" life expectancy of a diode-circuitry or HID-ballast-box ?
I am hopeful . . . but I am uncertain whether the fan on the LED headlight is a sign of careful design or of a worrying weakness. [And how reliable is the fan itself?]

Personally, I would like to have a headlight system with hybrid QH + LED elements, with enough redundancy so that I can keep riding at fair touring speed, even when one component has expired.
Maybe you call that "reliability" or maybe you call that "resilience" . . . when you are far from the nearest corner store.