wierd failure 95 R1100RS

[michael Tobias]

Hi, I have a 95 R1100RS (37K on the clock) which my son drives sometimes. when I bought it the clutch releasae made a strange clunk sometimes on start up. the dealer I purchased it from said it was ok though. we have put 8k on it since we bought it and today in the 105+ heat my son was driving it back up from NYC and on the entrance to the GW bridge (going west) he said it overheated and lost all drive power. motor ran but could not engage the gear box to make it move. clutch cable still had tension and apparently did move things but you could not get the bike into any gear.

after some moderately unpleasant time waiting for help from the local police he gave up and we got a tow from the bridge authority...but only off the bridge. nice guys though no charge and they would not even take a tip. I drove down from Kingston and met him in Ft Lee while we waited for Geico road side assistance to arrange towing to the nearest dealer....Bergen County HD/BMW. we got there just before closing. they will try to look it over tomorrow and let me know something.

any ideas on the cause? any feedback on the dealer? They seemed pretty nice.

[sweatmark]

From symptoms you've stated, sounds like clutch hub / transmission input shaft spline failure.

See topic in R1150R section concerning this failure mode, plus lots of opinion regarding the technical and ethical issues surrounding same.

Hoping your problem turns out to be something different.

[michael Tobias]

thank you....interestng reading!

[sweatmark]

I might have jumped the gun on diagnosis. Just hot-headed & pet-peeved about that R1150** spline problem.

The R1100** bikes had some transmission issues. Our old R1100R was often grumpy in the 1st-2nd-3rd shift range, and I took it as a sign that original owner had ham-fisted (pork-footed?) the shifting at some stage, with possible damage to the transmission shift dogs mechanism.

Here's some info:
http://www.largiader.com/tech/oiltrans/

[michael Tobias]

the bike is at Max's finally apart ... the clutch seems to have evaporated...the splines appear to be in good shape though and other than the clutch itself they did not see any other issues. as bad as it was to break down on the GW brdge I am happy we got thru our summer trip and did not do this way out in the boonies.