BMW G650GS Touring Setup – Updated 2024

A year ago I made a video on my BMW G650GS touring setup that I would use to ride across all of Italy. Since then, I’ve learned a lot.

I’ve gone back home, I’ve bought some stuff, and I’ve brought them back here for another round, riding across Italy, so today’s video is about my new and improved BMW G650GS touring setup.

In today’s video we’ll look at:

• What I’ve kept the same
• What I’ve added, why, and how it’s worked out
• What I still need to improve for my next big trip
• What I got very wrong about two up touring with the BMW G650GS

What I’ve kept the same

Most of this first part will just be a repeat of my original setup, so we’ll fly through it quickly. If you need any additional details, go check the original video out I’ll link to it in the description and in the pinned comment. Here it goes:

– The Kappa/GIVI wind screen is by far my favorite of the three wind screens I’ve tried for this motorcycle.

– The BMW OEM wind protectors (or the Puig option is also great) paired with the OEM heated grips were great last year when I was riding through cold and wet, they can stay forever.

The ATLAS Throttle Lock is still there, but honestly the roads in Italy are all so twisty that I almost never use it.

My battery-to-SAE charging and accessory connector is still great and I still use it every day.

TecMate SAE to USB Smart Charger to let me charge my devices while I’m riding. More on that later.

Two GIVI 41 liter side cases, still good enough!

One Shad 37 liter top case that I’ve mounted a little offset to the rear, this was to give my passenger more room so that she couldn’t be crowding me.

One expandable front bag made specifically for the G650GS.

Seat Concepts Tall Comfort Seat

Lastly, the Seat Concepts seat is still fantastic. I’ve put over 8,000 km on this thing and I still love it, it’s still the best motorcycle seat I’ve had in almost 20 years of motorcycle riding.

Basically you make your order, they have a bunch of options like if you want the standard seat height, or even a bit taller. They also give you options on what kind of finish you want. They build the seat foam to fit your original seat pan, as well as you specifically as a rider.

You tell Seat Concepts your weight, what kind of material of pants you ride in, what kind of surface you ride on, etc. Seat Concepts makes the foam for your bike to work for you. What you’re buying is the custom foam, and a custom seat cover.

When you get your package, the first thing you’ll do is flip your seat upside down and remove all of the staples. You can take the original seat cover and foam, and replace it with the Seat Concepts foam and seat cover. Staple the cover in place at the top, the bottom, and on both sides in the middle. Once you have that done you can staple all the way around, and you’re done.

The process, if you’ve done something like this before, should take no more than an hour. If this is your first time doing this, you can expect it to take about two hours.

You can see what Seat Concepts offers for the G650GS here. I’m about 5’11” and went with the Tall option.

Again, if you want more details about any of these, just check out my original BMW G650GS Touring Setup video. I’m trying to keep this quick for the people who’ve already seen that one.

What I’ve added, why, and how it’s worked out

So what did I pack in my suitcase for this year’s month riding around Italy?

First off, a crash guard. It’s one piece construction, I don’t know who made it, I barely got it to fit in my suitcase, but I wanted more protection because I don’t know too many out here. I don’t have a lot of tools or time when I’m here to fix stuff, and I haven’t dropped this bike yet, but it could happen one day, so better safe than sorry.

An ulterior motive for adding the upper crash guard was being able to put stuff on it, including these two bags. Yes they say V-Strom on them… Whatever. The point is that they let me leave stuff on the motorcycle that isn’t valuable enough to steal (like my dirty laundry), that I don’t need to carry in and out of hotels (like a tire patch kit), or that are just heavy items when I want to move weight to the front of the motorcycle.

My first metal RAM ball mount was starting to crack. The metal was too thin for the constant daily touring use for a month. This year I brought two new ones with me, these ones with much thicker bases so they should hopefully last me for years. One for my Capuride device, the other is to give me the option to either my 360 camera, or to mount my phone should I ever need to.

I’ve also added SAE to USB with an on/off switch. It’s similar to what I was already using last year, but lets me manually turn off the power in case I want to stop my device from getting power without having to pull over every time I want to unplug or replug things while riding, in case my phone is getting too hot from charging in the heat for example.

Generic Android Auto Device

Next up I added this generic Android Auto or Apple CarPlay device. Personally I have 99% of notifications turned off when I’m riding, I don’t care for that stuff, but being able to use Waze on a big bright screen with a built in shade is a great help.

Here are 4 things I like about it and 2 things I don’t like:

Likes:

1. I can leave this thing on for hours while I’m riding, and no more worries about Waze getting burned into my screen because I have it on max brightness for so long, or of a dead motorcycle battery when I get to my destination, or of my phone’s camera being ruined because my vibration isolation mount wasn’t good enough. That’s like three things in one.
   
2. I have all the phone functionality I would want to use while riding (like Waze, next song, previous song, pausing an audio book), and I can choose to only get notifications from people in my emergency contact list. Everything else can wait until I get off the motorcycle.
   
3. To expand on that, I can transmit music, audio books, whatever, from my phone to this device, and then from this device to my Bluetooth comm system in my helmet.
   
4. It’s very bright, even without the visor. Also because the touch screen works really well, even in gloves, it’s easy to adjust the brightness up or down, or handle the controls, even with my ICON Pursuit gloves on.

Dislikes:

1. This isn’t very millennial of me, but I wish it was smaller. They offer a 7” model and a 5” model. I got the 5” model and in my opinion it still looks big and bulky on the motorcycle. Whether I’m taking pictures of my motorcycle somewhere beautiful, or showing the helmet cam footage of somewhere beautiful, this big fucking thing occupies so much space and distracts from I really want people to see.
   The flipside to this is the larger device lets you have audio controls on one side while having your GPS open on the other side, so that’s handy if you’re a frequent song switcher, but I barely use that so I’d rather just have a screen half the size.
2. I wish it had a quick disconnect or something that didn’t involve having to unscrew and rescrew both my mount and the power cable. I’ve seen others that just have a single thumbscrew at the back. One screw, that’s it. That would be so much better.

Ok, now for the rest of the stuff…

Lastly I added this tool tube where the BMW G650GS’ original dual exhaust used to be. Last year I spent so much time taking my rain gear in and out of the top case, or getting my rain gear out of the way to get to other things in my top case. Or my rain gear would get things in the top case wet that I’d rather have dry. This way I can fit at least my rain pants, waterproof boot covers, and vinyl gloves in here to help me keep myself more organized.

Of course, since I’ve done this, I haven’t needed to use my rain gear once this year… go figure.

What I still need to improve

I’ve made an entire video on this no-name LED headlight for the G650GS from China. It’s true that it’s better than the BMW original, but, it’s still not enough. Like anywhere else in the world, once you’re outside of big cities or off of big highways, you don’t have street lighting in Italy.

However, because Italy is super mountainous, once the sun sets behind the next row of mountains, it doesn’t just slowly get darker, it gets a lot darker, a lot more quickly.

I was supposed to be adding auxiliary lighting to this setup. A company told me they were sending me two of their lights to try out. They claimed there was a problem with the shipment and so, I never received them. This is a trap that you fall into as a YouTuber, because, normally you when you’re going on this kind of adventure you should do everything you can to rely on yourself, but sometimes you get these opportunities, so you rely on others, and you plan accordingly, and then your plan crumbles. So my rides at night this year were definitely much darker than I would have liked.

I’ll also add a couple more battery SAE plugs so I can have my phone charging in my pocket. Just in case something bad happens, and I get separated from my G650GS, I want my phone to be on me, and fully charged.

And the last thing I still need to improve ties into…

What I got very wrong about two up touring on the BMW G650GS

Before shipping the BMW G650GS over to Italy to do cross country two up touring on it, my partner and I did a 2,000 km round trip from Toronto to Quebec City in Canada. That went well, so we assumed everything would go just as well in Italy too.

I was so wrong. Motorcycle riding in Italy is nothing like motorcycle riding in Canada.

And that’s not because the road conditions are different, they’re much better here. It’s not because the signage is different, things are often more obvious here. It’s not even because the drivers are different… okay, in some ways they are better here, in some ways they’re really not, but that’s another story…

The big difference between motorcycle touring in Italy versus in Canada, especially two up touring in Italy versus in Canada, is that the roads are way curvier, and way more mountainous, and you are really working your motorcycle’s suspension, balance, and braking so much harder when you’re riding in Italy than in North America.

If you’re only touring one up, you might not notice it as much, but once you add a passenger and two people’s cargo on the back, and your BMW G650GS is no longer well balanced front to back at all, the difference is pretty crazy. So I’ve already stiffened up the rear suspension, but my next modification will likely be upgrading the rear suspension.

Have you done any motorcycle touring on a BMW G650GS? Do you have any experience two up touring on any motorcycle in Italy or elsewhere in Europe? Let me know your thoughts. I’d love to hear what you have to say!

I’m Adrian from YouMotorcycle. Like and subscribe if you want more, and remember…

Ride safe, but have fun!