So have been thinking about these for a while now and finally got time to get down to the city to visit our HD dealer. Spoke to the missus about going and told her I was only going for a look and anyway the orange and white ones look like HD forgot to paint the fairing so I will definitely not be getting one of those. Also, I have owned some version of the BMW GS for 35 years now so was not too interested in a dirt bike with a chain. Still have one of the original R80GS Paris Dakar models with the 40ltr tank and orange solo seat.

You can see where this is going can't you...

I bought an orange and white one!!!

Got a couple of extras for protection while there, no not that sort of protection. Protection for the bike.

Got it home, ripped the fairing off and painted it black so will have a black bike with an orange tank.

Think I will powdercoat the headlight and radiator protectors orange to see what they will look like. I can always powdercoat them black again if I do not like it.

Thanks for the comments WGNZ and FB. Will post some photos once fairing is back on the bike.

Steelo, still have the Ultra. Bought this on a whim so wanted to keep the Ultra for the long two up trips.

PB, Hope to get up your way in the new year. Looking at your photos of the GS it seems you are not too from from my family roots. And yes it is always better when you are on top of the bike and not the bike is on top of you. Have read your post on the slip with the GS and while we always hope it will never happen we have to be realistic when going into unfamiliar territory that "poo happens" from time to time.

These are a couple of photos of my trip back in the 90s. First is in Cameroon when I came around a corner and there was a fallen tree across the track. Managed to get the front wheel up in the air and hit the tree with the frame but it all went sideways from there. Second one is a mate that I crossed Africa with. We were in Zaire and there was this big washout in the road so I said "Why don't you just ride around it?" He never took advice from me again after that...

I reckon that extra-dark tinted visor may have caused your mate to ride into that mud hole.

The PA after the paint job. Not too sure about the radiator guard but am happy with the rest. The orange colour is not an exact match but a lot closer than the flash on the camera makes it look.

If you can be bothered, and IMHO, I'd leave the bar and shield on the radiator guard orange and blacken out the rest of the radiator guard.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

GG260 Thanks for the input on the radiator grill. Might have a go at it in Photo Editor to see what it will look like before going ahead. Now that I have had it on there for a couple of days it is starting to grow on me. Still not that big a job to change just a matter of having the time at the moment.

Hound_Dog,  I am not a journalist by any means but once I have had a good ride off-road I will post my thoughts.

Just thought I would also post this picture to give some context to the photo I posted where my buddy got bogged in Zaire (now the Congo) on his red GS. This is the main route from Central African Republic to Uganda and I drove a truck up and down this route for a while to make some money so I could move on to the next place. This type of bog hole was typical along the route and sometimes it could take us all day just to get a few hundred meters. The bog hole where my buddy got stuck trying to go around was fairly full with water after some particularly heavy rains so we decided it was not worth trying to go through on the bikes (you do not know how deep they are and there could be anything in the bottom, not just mud) so I suggested to him to ride around the edge. This is where it all came unstuck or perhaps that should be stuck.

I think I mentioned in another post somewhere that I could change the clutch in my R80GS on the side of the road. I found these photos of me doing just that.

I was in the Western Sahara when the splines on the clutch plate all shredded. Sat on the side of the track for a couple of days till some guys in a Landrover came past and towed me about 500km back to the nearest town. Rang the BMW dealer in England and had them airmail me another clutch plate to the local Post Restante. Took about two weeks for it to arrive in which time I got to know the locals quite well and was accepted into their community with the utmost hospitality, made me feel very humble at the time. These people are living literally on the edge of the biggest desert in the world and are extremely poor by our standards but they always invited me in for a drink of tea if they saw me wandering around the town. A few of them even tried to marry me off to their daughters. I always pointed out to them that the bike only has a single seat and hoped they would not be offended by me declining their offer of marriage.

Anyway fitted the clutch and then headed out into the desert again but this time in a more southerly direction towards Senegal.

Never really found out why the car was like that. While I would not say they are everywhere across the Sahara this was not the only one I saw buried like this. I can only assume that it broke down and it was done like this as some sort of joke.