R1200R vs GS

MarkM said:

That's interesting to read, coming from a Baton Rouge rider. How much very hot weather have your ridden the RT in? Are we talking hot and humid Louisiana weather? It's hard to envision how you get much airflow over your torso even with the windshield all the way down. I've test ridden the R12RT in hot-humid St. Louis weather and concluded it would be too hot on a long ride, but it was not a long enough test ride to get really uncomfortably hot. Maybe I need to spend more time on one next summer if the dealer is agreeable to letting it go for a couple of hours.

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Good Morning Mark, and happy new year..

I actually took about a 400 mile run in August, temperature 96, humidity about 85%, heat index someplace in the 110 range at 2:30pm on the bike to see what everyone was talking about with the heat behind the fairing. As a baseline, my riding gear is the Motoport Airmesh II kevlar jacket with the Quad armor, and the pants on that particular ride were the BMW Summer pants with standard armor. Helmet is the Shoei Multitech. Underwear is Coolmax wicking stuff that really helps in the heat.

When stopped, it is hot, but once moving, I did not find it miserable. One thing I noticed is that if you turn your knees out, it catches some air that cools things off nicely. The Goldwing crowd has figured out putting air deflectors on the fairings pull air in to help cooling with their really protected position behind the fairing. If you look at the K1600's, they have deflectors built into the fairing that actually work really well in hot weather. I would suspect that the waterhead RT evolution will probably do something like that on the updated bike in a year or so.

One other thing to know about my riding is that I also teach Riders Edge classes in the summer a lot of weekends, and it is not unusual for us to see actual temperatures in the 110-115 range while out on the course and all of us instructors are acclimatized to the heat, and push liquids with the Camelbak packs, so riding in the heat is not as bad as if I were in an air conditioned office all the time. We really have to watch students in that heat as I have had to treat heat exhaustion a number of times every summer.

As a cross-check control, I have switched to my RR in the same temperatures, and it is very miserable when the heat is in the above 100 degree heat indexes because the hot air even when riding is very tiring and requires constant hydration to avoid problems. It might seem counter-intuitive, but if you ride in the desert, you will be cooler behind a fairing or with the suit vents closed off. Same thing seems to work in our Louisiana humidity.

You should take a long ride, minimum about 4 hours, on a hot day in STL and see what you think. For comparison, take the same ride on either an RR or a GS or whatever so you can see the difference. One thing you might try too, is to stand up on the pegs of the RT while you are riding. That cools things off nicely and makes hot ride days much better.

Hope this helps !

it does sound counter-intuitive

but what i have noticed on my R1150RT, is that the fairing is so good at wind management, that the heat from the motor is vented away from the rider; unlike either my R1100GS, or my wife's R1150R.

This seductive wench keeps winking at me. Yikes !! Now there are TWO of them side by side. OMG !.