Steve1200S wrote:I always find single Sided-ness a bit silly. A normal two sided swing arm is lighter, stiffer and probably cheaper to produce, even for a shaftie.
Wouldn't look as good, but it makes more sense in many other ways.
BMWs combined driveshaft/swing arm/brake carrier is a very cool bit of engineering though.
Would be interesting to know if someone had actually measured that. There's two aspects to it, weight wise. All up weight and unsprung mass. I suspect that the modern design might not weigh any less but might place its weight better for unsprung mass influences. But then again there are two UJ's in the new design so maybe it is no better than the earlier design in respect to unsprung mass?
Measuring all up weight would be easy. Calculating unsprung mass not quite so easy.
Had a blast on a GS today. Got to say, it's a nice bike which is really fun, but I was glad to get back on a "road" bike afterwards.
I don't really find them nimble, I can throw a nice heavy tourer around and it'll always be stable, but the GS's light steering and twitchyness mean I'm always being very careful with the steering.... Guess you get used to them eventually... Maybe I'm just ham fisted!
I guess I must be lucky, because I have never had a shaft final drive fail on me yet, and I've had mainly shaft driven bikes since I started in the 80's.
I did once have a chain break on me, on a brand new 600 Diversion, a few miles after picking it up.