Hi all,
I have a chance seeing and riding couple of of touring, sport-touring and adventure bikes :
- Honda : Crosstourer 2012, ST1300 2010, Goldwing 2010-2013 (including F6B and the Airbag model)
- BMW : K1300 2010, K1600 2012, F800GS Adv 2012, R1200GS Adv 2010-2012
- Yamaha : FJR1300 well ... i think Yamaha has made no change since 2005
- Kawasaki : C-14 2010 (my own bike)
Except for the F800 & R1200 which seem built for adventure, they have many choices of case with good latching mechanism, all other bike, including the the luxury K1600 .....the latches are mainly made from plastic which is spoiled after time, especially in a bumpy environment like Vietnam. The Bimmer has very wise idea to bend one of the locking point (the most frontal one) an angle of 45 degre to avoid the jump of the case in vertical movement, but still ...anything plastic is spoiled very fast so sooner or later the latches would be gone. You should see the lousy Honda case built for the Crosstourer, it couldn't even last for 1 trip here in Vietnam !!! Like i mention earlier, the side case of the F800 & R1200 are locked to the frame by metal latches (or maybe because my friends bought after-market side cases from Touratec ?) so i haven't seen them yet being spoiled. Goldwing is different since the side cases are built into the frame, but those side cases are useless cuz cannot put much thing in there.
By the way, you guys should pay attention to the 2 bolts that retain the head-light assembly to the frame, after about 15,000Km i started seeing my gauges and the head-light shaking but couldn't find out why, then one day after some very dusty trip i asked my shop to remove all the plastic for a real "bath", then both 2 bolts were ....missing, same thing happened to another friend on his C-14 2012.
at
