Diagno$i$?

[MIXR]

Ian - A couple of things are relevant here.

Some people (including dealers) seem to just refit new bearings and the same shims, assuming that the shimming was right first time from the factory. That will eventually generate another failure. Too tight is as bad as too loose. The job must be re-measured, so ask that question of your dealer.

When I put the used unit with an unknown history (suspected as being 100,000 kms old) into my GSA I figured it wouldn't last very long. It's been good for 12,000 kms now. However, I did several oil changes after installation, and even changed oil to a Mobil gear oil. After my first oil change I got a heap of 'stuff' out of the diff. That was after 500 kms! I figured it was stuffed as well. I cleaned it up, gave it fresh oil and it came good. Nothing on the next three oil changes at under 1,000 km intervals.

I suspect that my new oil had just cleaned up the inside of the old housing. It's stayed clean since. Your guys may have simply failed to clean all the crud out of the old housing before they reassembled it. Maybe - Maybe not. It will hide in all the nooks and crannnies. They should have advised you to do a series of progressively longer-interval oil changes to monitor what's going on. It's a 5 minute job with a hot diff and $10 of oil (a litre) gives you 4 changes.

It will be interesting to see if they did a proper shimming job, cleaned the original failure properly, or screwed up something else. Good luck. Mick.

PS - My old Roadster is back in my shed with a failed drive shaft. It appears as though the two-piece shaft failed at the rubber torsion join between the larger outer and smaller inner shafts. Another rare but known failing in the Beemer drive system. You can look forward to that next!

[garr2]

I bought the bike at 50000 km and have added another 70000.
In that time I have been working my way through the 1150 know issues -
1) QDs - check
2) stick coils - check
3) clutch (X2) - check
4) final drive (X2?) - check
5) ABS - not yet
6) clutch splines - not yet
7) drive shaft (thanks for that MIXR!) - not yet

If pushed I (might) admit to being (partly) responsible for the clutch failures.
Anything else I should know about or should I blunder on in blissful ignorance?

I've enjoyed the bike but both of us are getting a bit old to continue like this - a 1200 perhaps.

Ian

[MIXR]

Don't go looking for lists of R1200xx issues that need to be addressed then! You'll have a whole new set of problems to address. Some familiar, and some different.

If you're happy enough with the bike and have done all the big things, then I'd stick with it for now. There is always a cloud of 'unreliability' that hangs over a bike once it starts to fail in areas that go beyond the routine road-side fix. You just have to get past that.

I did 155,000 kms on my Roadster before it gave me trouble. A mate has it now, but I would happily buy it back from him even with the current drive-shaft failure. My R1150GSA Outfit now has a huge cloud hanging over it every time I take it out. When will the rear drive fail? Or now that I know about the BMW drive shaft design, when will the shaft fail? You can bet it will happen. You can bet that when it does, it will be in the middle of the night a long way from home.

But here I am looking for another Roadster or Rockster.

If you are terrified of taking the bike more than 100 kms from home in case it fails - Go buy a Super-Ten, or something else. Don't buy another Beemer as the problems are just as likely (Pessimist), or unlikely (Optimist), if you think positive thoughts.

Cheers Ian, and good luck with the dealer.

[garr2]

If you are terrified of taking the bike more than 100 kms from home in case it fails ...

Not 'terrified' but getting cautious - cautious enough to join the bike up to the premium level of coverage in the NRMA*. For premium cover you get roadside assistance, and in the event of a problem that can't be fixed roadside, you get towing, accommodation, & car (bike?) hire. I've already used it once. I'm doing everything I can to be faithful to the 1150 but my wife has experienced one not-roadside-fixable breakdown and is in no mood to repeat it. Divorce is so messy!

Don't go looking for lists of R1200xx issues that need to be addressed then! You'll have a whole new set of problems to address. Some familiar, and some different.

I put a post on the 1200 forum asking that precise question viz known issues, and apart from the fuel strip issue they came up blank. I'm once again wary enough to be reminded about Christine Keeler (a member of the oldest profession) who when told that a British politician denied using her services replied, "He would say that wouldn't he."

Ian

PS It's a beautiful day here so my wife and I are going out for a ride. Not anticipating any problems - the 1150 is off the road so we're on bicycles!

* (for foreigners, that's our roadside assistance organisation)

[garr2]

I took the bike to the dealer along with an oil sample from the final drive, photographs of the magnetic drain plug and filings residue. Even though the warranty of 3 months on workmanship and 12 months on parts allowed wriggle room, the dealer was quite concerned about the apparent failure within 6 months and 7000 km.
They undertook to remove and examine the drive. They found no damage to the gears within the drive and but decided as a precaution to replace the crown gear bearing. All this was done at their expense.
Because I do my own servicing, I am not a regular at the dealership so I couldn't claim any sort of special relationship built up over a period of time. No, I think they were just being reasonable and professional. When presented with the evidence and after inspecting the FD themselves they did the repair.

I'm still unsure whether the filings I found when I did the FD oil change were left over from the earlier repair (ie FD not flushed out) or came from a second bearing failure. As precaution I will follow MIXR's advice and change the FD oil at progressively longer intervals checking each time for filings.

Don't ya love a happy ending.

Ian

[Remow2112]

Not sure if this applies to BMW final drive, but if you redo gears and bearings in most car rear ends there will be some metal filings as everything seats.

HTH,
Dan...

[garr2]

Recently returned home from a 2000 km ride and had a chance to change the FD oil.
The magnetic drain plug showed some sparkly attachments though less than before the crown gear bearing was replaced under warranty. Inspection of the drained oil showed some very fine metal sediment, once again less than before.



I will continue to drain and inspect the FD oil every couple of thousand and see what happens.
Hopefully there will be a reduced amount of sediment suggesting that the FD is clearing the filings from the earlier catastrophic failure. Even so I'm not happy about an ever reducing amount of metal circulating in my FD.
There is no play in the rear wheel.
I can only wait and see.

Ian

[garr2]

A few months and a thousand km later I changed the FD oil again today and found this -



Still some filings but getting less and less.
I think Mixr and Remow2112 were right - the FD is self cleansing after the initial (and possibly 2nd) FD failure.
The moral of this story (epic?) seems to be that a FD should be flushed a number of times after a bearing failure and repair.
It would be better to do the oil changes after say 200, 500 and 1000 km.
Using only 0.23 L of gear oil and a couple of crush washers each time makes it an inexpensive job.
Hopefully this is my last post on this thread.

Ian

[sweatmark]

Good info, thanks for the follow-up and pics.

[duegi]

FD on 2004 was weeping a touch of oil this Fall, found a used FD for $300, put a new big seal in it and mounted the used FD to the R. All good so far after 6K miles.
Send the original FD from the US up to Bruno's Machine in Canada for a rebuild. Found out the along with the big bearing going bad the front bearing (drive shaft) was also getting toasty. Bruno mentioned this indicated the drive shaft was either out of balance or a U-joint in the drive shaft was going bad. Being it's Winter in the upper US I'll be puling the FD and sending off the drive shaft for a going over.
Will post up the cost of the FD and drive shaft costs once complete. Bruno's Machine came recommended from riding friends and mechanics all over the US.
http://www.brunos.us/