BMW R1200R R1150R/T F800 K1200R R1100R/T R1250R RnineT Message Board

Right side of bike at rear of paralever. Upper fill plug is 6mm Hex bit socket. Lower is directly underneath (same size). Remove both plugs.

BUT FIRST have a suitable container to catch the FD oil. Smell, look, examine plug residue, taste. Okay, don't taste it. Replace lower plug. Torque 30Nm.

Add 0.25 liter (0.26 quarts) API GL5 80W90 natural or synth. To bottom of threads.

Caution: Overfilling causes a seal failure and fluid can migrate forward into the final drive/paralever drive shaft interface area.

Retorque fill plug to 30Nm.

Clean up your mess!

BOL

Page 79 of manual...etc

I waited and did mine at 12k with Red Line synth but plan on looking at the FD a bit more often based on some advice from the oilhead maintenance session moderated by John Glaves at the rally last month .
He started off talking about what he's seeing as an increasingly common failure - the FD support bearing. He stated that BMW recognizes the problem and re-designed the bearing from 19 to 17 balls but that the failures are still occurring with the new bearing. He recommends 2 things.

The first is to change the FD gear lube at the same time you do an oil change. The reason is not to get new fluid in the drive but to be able to check the magnet on the drain plug. Dark slushy deposit good, bits of silver bad. If there are metal chips on the magnet, there is nothing you can do except replace the bearing but a least you know in advance, before it fails on the road.

The other recommendation is to use straight 90W conventional gear lube in the FD, not synthetic. He is convinced that most of the bearing wear takes place from metal to metal contact when the bike is moved from cold and believes that conventional gear lube stays put longer on the top of bearing race (and that synthetics are too thin). He acknowledged that this is not what he's recommended in the past but says he is convinced that conventional provides more consistent (i. e., cold) protection than synthetic. He also took pains to point that he still recommends synth for the transmission (75W-140) and crankcase where the operating temps and friction loads are higher.

The late, great Rob Lentini offered this on IBMWR.org:

"[Put] Dow Corning Gear Gard "M" in the tranny and final drive to increase shifting ease. This stuff is available in quart bottles at bearing stores. Mix 3-5% by volume in tranny, final drive, and for others, fork oil. Shifting and fork oil "stiction" essentially go away."

Note that Gear Gard is not compatible with synthetic oil.

MikeCam wrote:Caution: Overfilling causes a seal failure and fluid can migrate forward into the final drive/paralever drive shaft interface area.

Can I substitue this to help with the spline lube problems?

"the result of thousands of hours of testing and calculations by dozens of engineers" also gave us the motronic

RonBomb

Getting ready to switch to synthetics on my '02 R1150R, at just under 8,000 miles. My manuals say to use 80/90 or 90 weight in the trannie, but I see alot of folks are using higher viscosty ranges, like 70/140. What is the reason to use the heavier weight fluid in the transmission?

Well a lot of it depends on the ambient temps. If it's say over 50 the majority of the year, a heavier oil is fine. If you don't ride but during the summer months then that's prolly fine too. I ride year round and I run 75-90 in the tranny and 80-90 in the diff. As you well know we experience about two months of miserable temps here in Kansas so it really depends a lot on your riding habits.

When these guys refer to the Redline Shockproof synthetics then things get even harder to sort out. That fluid has a different viscosity rating than it does internal fluid friction. I.E. the heavy shockproof is rated as a 75-250 oil where as it's actual fluid friction is only 75-90. If you want the protection yet retain functionality in the colder climates...this stuff is the way to go IMO.