George knows we both enjoyed a BMW Boxer. Mine was an R1100 RT, I had just finished 6 years of Harley ownership, just sort of got over it and wanted a touring bike for long distances. The Harley dealer also sold Triumph and was just down the road from the factory at Hinckley and had good relations with them so I had a 1200 Trophy built but with a Daytona engine installed. At 1500 miles and just after it’s forst service it snapped it’s chain and tore a hole in the transmission so Triumph bought it back (later traced to incorrect service manual instructions for chain tensioning).
That did it for me with chains so off to the nearest BMW dealer and borrowed the demonstrator. Brilliant salesman who when asked if I could borrow one for an hour said ‘no, after an hour you will think it’s weird, after a morning you will think it’s interesting but after a day you will buy one. See you tomorrow’.... I took it back the next day and ordered one on the spot!
5 years and nearly 60,000 trouble free miles later (literally just tyres and one set of front pads) it broke my heart to sell it but the +8 had been built and there was no room for both. A wonderful piece of machinery that took me to Southern Italy, Central Spain, Bavaria and Scandinavia and multiple EU trips. For one summer I even commuted to our Brussels office each week.
BR
Colin
