Well this is just stupid

 Hello children, today let me relay the frustration surrounding spares on my 2015 GS 1200 LC.

I noticed a small oil spot on the floor below the GS about a week ago and I could see that it was leaking on the inboard (wheel side) of the final drive. It was not a huge leak but it seemed to have had a slow leak for a while but I only noticed it once the oil was on the floor.

The seal replacement was priced around R1800 for the seal, labour etc. by the local BMW dealer.

Above is a picture of the seal that required replacement.

This in itself was fine but the technician found that the collar onto which the seal seals, was damaged.

They disassembled the final drive and although the outboard seal was fine, the shaft was also damaged below that seal. The seals were filled with dirt on the inside and although I have been diligent about servicing the final drive every time I had the scooter in deep water in addition to the normal BMW mandated servicing schedule, it was not enough. Disassembly and seal inspection is not part of the BMW service schedule. The recent recall for the drain one-way valve on the cardan shaft housing was also done a while back.

The shaft was damaged to the point that a polish of the sealing surfaces would probably not be good enough. So I need a new shaft. 

Below is a picture of the sealing surface on the right hand of the final drive where the seal failed. The seal matches to the collar between the splines (where the carrier fits for the rear brake disc)  and the bearing (which is also not replaceable by the way). It's on the left hand side of this picture.

In the picture below, the left hand side sealing surface is shown and it also has been damaged by the seal after 8 years of water / dirt / dust just grinding away at the shaft. The bike has a full service history and the final drive has had the odd additional oil change on my request.

The bearings and gear teeth are in good nick and the servicing probably had a good impact on that.

So, to get to my gripe with the product, below is a picture of all the items that are required to be replaced. It includes the casing, bearings, final drive, crown wheel, pinion gear etc. 

What the actual *%$@?

All of these components are on one part number 😨! Only the seals and other small items are seemingly separate replacement items. The full price of a final drive (excluding labour etc.) is around R32k!

How and why is this possible? 😱

If I went dumpster diving and tried to get a second hand final drive, what would the condition be and how long will it last? Unless it is a low mileage accident damaged bike, this is a risky option. 

Come on BMW, this is 2023. Sell the parts separately so that the actual BMW dealers can replace them. This isn't even a right to repair issue. The parts are only available as preassembled units. I can understand that the teeth need to match and so forth but the older model air-cooled GS bikes could have the gear assembly shimmed to adjust the contact area of the teeth. Why was the LC model made worse from a repairability perspective?  This is just driving a consumerism mentality and creating so much waste. 

Oh yes, great idea, let's remove plastic straws but force someone to throw away perfectly good, accurately machined parts or maybe claim R200 from the local scrap metal yard.

I don't understand it from an end-user perspective. Perhaps BMW can keep less spare parts on hand and "guarantee" performance of the unit but damn. This is why they have qualified technicians. Perhaps I'm getting older but in my dad's time cars used to have procedures for setting valve gaps in the normal user manual. Now, now you can't do anything on your own and the OEM does not even provide spare parts down to an acceptable level that a technician could easily assemble. 

When the drain recall was done on the cardan shaft housing, scooters with high mileages had their final drives replaced. Mine was checked and found to be in specification and the mileage was too low, so no replacement. Unfortunately, I don't use my GS on the road much and when I commute, it is via farm roads as well. I serviced when required and even more so when I knew it was used offroad in the wet a lot. The bike also does not qualify for a BMW goodwill claim as it is over 7 years old. I feel like I am being punished for not replacing the GS every time a new model comes out. 

I must say that the BMW dealer gave me a new 1250 GS to ride for the time my scooter was in the shop and also drove up and down to get me to the dealer and they are not in the same town as I am. Once again, great dealer, questionable product and poor spares availability. The 1250 scooter is definitely smoother than mine but that is to be expected. The one part I did not enjoy was the rake angle. It is stable on the road but I could just not seem to get it to turn as sharply as the 1200. The first 90 degree turn I made was one lane wide and although it improved a bit, it just feels off. 

It will probably be a great touring bike with this handling, the seat warmer etc. but for my riding habits the trophy edition without any electronics on would probably make more sense although it would still have the long rake angle and horrid suspension. The auto setting is okay but the automatic stiffening happens when I don't expect it. Perhaps this is a user problem and will get better with time. Hard is too hard and soft is good for most rides. Surprisingly the suspension cannot be changed whilst riding as on the 1200. This is a step backwards towards the air-cooled adventure I used to have. Gearbox wise there has been a good improvement made on the 1200. Shorter shift level travel felt secure when engaging any gear and the ratios were not bad either. Quick-shifting on the 1200 from 1st to 2nd is a violent experience with heavy loads imposed on the transmission and final drive. I avoid doing this as far as possible but the 1250 seemed better at it. I must say I rode it very conservatively as it is not mine, and I don't want to abuse their sales pitch, uhm, sorry I mean kind gesture.

Anyway, now I am sitting with a conundrum (again) that I should probably trade my GS and get something else but I have (again) spent to much on it, that I want to get some use out of it. Sunk cost fallacy if I ever heard one.

Talk to you after the next part fails, or has already failed and is replaced. There is already a faulty rear shock absorber lower bush that is worn. I'll perhaps post about that one another time.

😒 You need to be prepared to bear the consequences of a risky decision...

This is not going to be a cheery, happy, let's laugh at my life post but rather an update on the repair progress with the LC.

So to start off my weekend I received a call from the BMW dealer telling me that the rewound stator is not producing sufficient voltage. At idle it is producing around 2.4V AC and at revs is gets up to ±9V AC. With the coils measuring correctly in terms of resistance and balance between the phases it seems the most likely culprit is the sequence or number of turns per pole of the stator. The magnets were checked and passed a visual inspection. Even on the old stator the one phase was giving ±20V AC on idle which supports the theory that the magnets are operating correctly.

I can take the stator back to the rewinder to get it redone but he would need an example to compare it with as his notes are obviously flawed. That can be arranged but the labour to remove and reinstall the stator is limiting my options. I do not have a test rig to confirm if the rewound stator is working so it would be another risk I'm taking to install the 2nd rewind and have the bike partially assembled to be able to start it again and test the complete generator.

At this point I also cannot leave the bike in spares at the BMW dealer, taking their space for too long. It has to be fixed or I need to collect the complete bike in spares and leave it in my garage for a while until I have a better plan. Most likely I will have to bite the bullet and pay for the original repair quote of ±R23k plus whatever labour the technician spent on this partial assembly, test and disassembly. 

I'm sure there are some financial calculations available to decide on when to repair or replace a component, calculate the risk involved, the time value of money etc. but I thought that the risk was low enough for this to be taken as a viable option. The likelihood of success for my decision was never 100% but I felt at least 80% comfortable that is would work. Obviously you need to be prepared to suffer the consequences of the other 20% coming true, as it did for me.

I can only hope that the rest of the week will yield more positive results.

Regards

FFS :(

 Just as I was getting back into riding, Murphy has decided to strike again. This time the bike left the rider (not me as I was driving a backup vehicle) in a little town in the Eastern Cape called Rhodes with no tar roads and pretty much no mobile phone service either.

After an extended period of trying to get the bike started and keeping it running down the mountain pass into Rhodes it seemed that the bike was not charging the battery anymore 😞 . Luckily this was during a tour with the local BMW dealership and after a 3 hour recovery drive over Naude's Neck Pass with the backup vehicle I was able to get to my stranded bike and the unlucky rider. Of the three phases in the stator, all of them were measuring down to ground (probably due to the star point) and only one phase gave the required voltage at idle (±20V AC). This means that at least two phases were gone.

So after some diagnosis the next day at the stay over, the charging coils were determined to be faulty and this is apparently a somewhat frequent issue on the 2015 (or there about) LC motorcycles with no recall from BMW. With no repair options in the area and the scope of the work (I'll get into that below), the bike completed the remaining 2500km of the planned 3500km on the trailer. Best fuel consumption I ever got, 3500km on about 60l of petrol in the LC 😉.

Dropping it off at the dealer after the trip was done, and I was done contemplating the sale/replacement/throwing away of the LC, I decided to have the bike repaired with a rewound stator. The faulty unit is shown below.

The stator is burnt out at the toppish part of the unit but the real kicker is the replacement. The OEM (in their infinite wisdom) only sells the stator (called a generator on the quote) for an eye watering R14k since it comes paired with a new flywheel. Why in the name of all that is holy would you do that? The flywheel has no flipping reason for requiring replacement and the taper lock and Loctite® makes the removal of it a massive undertaking. This means in practice that it would be better to undo the three bolts keeping the stator in place and taking the new flywheel as a door stopper or wall plate 😵 like grandma used to have. I could put it next to the crankshaft I wrote off and make a collection I guess 😃.

Coming back to the pricing, I could possibly get a 2nd hand unit (of unknown reliability) for R7k (the guys obviously know what a new one costs) or do a rewind of the old unit. The pricing for rewinding of the unit varies from ±R1250 to ±R3400. Some of the rewinds do come with a 3 month warranty but the issue is not that cost, it is the fitment cost of the stator on the bike. Since the LC (and all 1200 GS models) basically has a longitudinally mounted drivetrain, with the gearbox behind the engine, the engine has to be removed from the frame for the installation 😱. And since the stator is mounted in between the engine and gearbox that has to be split as well along with some disassembly of the engine. Depending on the dealer and how much they are willing to assist with this in terms of cost, the labour runs ±R9k.

So, what do you do now? Install a rewound stator for R1250 with a 3 months warranty and hope it lasts for longer than that or go for the R14k OEM part since the labour is going to be another ±R9k if the rewound unit fails anyway 😓. I don't like adulting anymore.

After doing some questionable market research (posting on Think Bike) I decided to go the rewind route and see what I get. I managed to get my hands on another failed stator that I could rewind first and determine if it was good enough to have it installed. A shout out to the BMW dealer for assisting with testing of the rewound stator free of charge before I decided on the fate of the LC. I can attest to the fact that I do not have the best motorcycle in the world or that BMW in not necessarily the best brand, but the dealership makes a massive difference in my experience with the product. If it was not for them I would have moved to something else a long time ago. I have colleagues that have done 90k on their LCs with minimal issues but I also use the dual purpose of the LC where they do not. I don't think my riding style has anything to do with this failure but perhaps the low speed, technical riding does allow some heat build-up. Having said that, that is why the bike has oil, an oil cooler, water, a radiator and rev limiter etc. 

Anyway, the rewound stator is shown below.

The rewinder did not have the exact thickness of wire required so he had to use two different sized wires to get to the same cross sectional area to ensure that the resistance is correct across the three phases and also that they are in balance (which is more of a concern as the resistance should be 0 - 3ohm per phase).  The rewind was obviously not done by a machine but with the measurements being correct the bike is now in pieces at the dealer and the rewound stator is being installed. The hope is that the stator will produce the correct voltage and last long enough for me to feel that I have gotten back some of the money that I am spending on this repair.

It is unfortunately not sustainable to keep spending this kind of money on a low mileage bike but I am betting on this being the last costly failure for a while. With the new LC running around R330k according to the BMW Motorrad website it becomes debatable whether an upgrade is worth it. Especially since I only ride tar roads to get to the gravel ones. Taking that kind of money off-road is not an easy feeling. It probably changers after the first time you drop it but no one wants to do that unnecessarily. I am test riding some other brands in the meantime as I cannot sell this one for a reasonable price if it is not repaired. I also don't want to pass on a faulty bike to another rider. I'll make sure this one is functional and that the stator has proven itself before making the final sell/keep decision. If it does fail again I'm not sure what I will do, but selling it for parts is one option or I'll have to pay for a new stator/flywheel with the associated ±R23k parts and labour cost. Perhaps I should make a post of my test ride(s) as I can't go riding anyway😀. 

Until next time...

9 years, seriously?

 Sooo.... 9 odd years seem to be enough time between posts. Wouldn't want to flood the readers with 'content' and according to the 'influencers' (how did this become a thing anyway; probably due to participation trophies) you should always leave people wanting more. A crap ton of stuff has happened in the last few years and none of it was really important. 

Things that once seemed worthy of attention and worry is now long forgotten and ultimately meaningless. Meh, that's the way life unfolds I guess. The girl you gawked at as a young man now wears an extra support brasier to combat gravity and she is still, frustratingly so, out of your league 😢. 

Anyway, the daft Labrador is a memory long gone which made way for some time without a scooter which ultimately led to my wife telling me to please buy another bike because I was allegedly irritable, unreasonable, inattentive and some other stuff I can't remember 🙂. Cue stage left and enter the 2015 BMW GS1200LC.

The change was pleasant enough and after adding some off-road protection along with the obligatory Acropocavich slip-on (this is the correct Eastern European pronunciation 👍), the Mud Slug was ready to go and conquer what the Labrador could not achieve.

I'll leave the part where the main bearings stuck onto the crankshaft and a few other issues for another day's lament. Subsequent to this catastrophe the bike was in neat piles again at the local BMW dealer and I decided to wrap it whilst I had the separate body parts at hand.

I eventually went for a scheme along the lines of the BWM M colours and it came out pretty descent. It does seem to give some protection in terms of scratches and the inevitable tumble down some dodgy mine dump that is apparently radioactive if the sign boards are to be believed 😐. It has held up well over time and the fade seems acceptable considering the UV exposure we get here in the good old RSA. 

To bring this post to an abrupt end, that was enough of an update for now, see you in another 9 years.. probably.

Transformer, GSA style

There are just so many hours a day that one man can fill with hard work, or any work for that matter. Eight hours a day at graft during this time of the year is absolute murder. All the nice chickies are on leave and the ones left makes me barricade my office door from the inside. (None of them read the forum…. I hope). There I am, a somewhat scary man in my early thirties, hiding from the acting boss whilst ordering my minions to do the slave labour they were made for. Let them work the fields whilst I command my massive labour force (just four okes actually) from my air conditioned office to achieve milestone after milestone for which I will take all the credit. Aahh, life just cannot get better than this? Or can it? Yes, yes I say to myself. Soon I will throw off the shackles of employment and before I trudge home to the ball-and-chain of eternal love I will have two full hours of GS madness ahead of me. I will be riding through the meadows, waiving at damsels and then…. leave them behind. Why leave them behind you may ask, you leave them behind because soon they will begin to nag and slow you down. It’s inevitable, their like a black hole drawing a white dwarf closer and closer (this is apparently physics not soft porn, no editing required).

In the middle of my yearning for graft to end, I suddenly remember what my mother once told me. She said that men don’t get old; it’s only our toys that get more expensive. So what did almost every boy have or perhaps want? A transformer. Now, I’m not talking about the guy in Brakpan sitting on his fold-up chair whilst having an epileptic attack, no, I am talking about a machine that in the blink of an eye can change from something beautiful and sleek to something awe inspiring. In front of your eyes the mundane changes into something that you never thought possible, not even in your wildest dreams. I had the privilege this past Friday to experience this first hand.

I started off with this: Beautiful and sleek

And five minutes later I ended up with this: Awe inspiring

How could this happen? I pondered this for about 2 hours whilst being stuck in the rain after dark on an abandoned road with the bike refusing to start. It is quite simple actually, I blame Hitler. Having not been very interested in history at school I found myself now reading up on zhe (read any ‘Z’ with a German accent) little German for no apparent reason. How he used his dark charisma to bring us the Holocaust, the VW Beetle and the GSA. So, when I saw the flooded farm road ahead of me I thought I could crush it like the Luftwaffe! But alas, I was sitting on top of a U-boat and not a Messerschmitt. About halfway through the 30m section of water the Messerschmitt lost its direction and did an emergency dive. I did a belly flop (about 8 out of 10) to the right and the U-boat went left. Before I could get the kill switch, it managed to commit suicide by drowning. Standing up next to my sunken vessel the water was at knee’s height. I righted the bike, spent the next 30 minutes pushing it out of the water/mud and up a muddy hill to where I could actually put it on the main stand. I tried to get as much water out of the engine as possible for a desperate last-time start, I didn’t get it all. When the GSA did turn over, zhe starter emitted a spine chilling, satanic wolf scream that only Jamie Lee Curtis could properly imitate. Together we spent the next 25km in relative silence as we nursed each other home; me with a newly acquired throat infection and the GSA with something a little more life threatening.

Below is the GSA in the expensive care unit at BMW Motorrad.

The damage above is just over R10k and I will only have the U-boat back in 2013 due to the insurance assessors closing for the year.
All this before even paying the 1^st instalment on the bike.

Somewhere in this there is probably a very valuable lesson that can be learned.
I’m still laughing so maybe that is why I can’t see it (apart from the obvious plug spanner I will now add to my tool kit).
In the end it was still a crap load of fun!!!

RIP: Dog of War

I picked up the latest edition of the Superbike mag in the shops the other day.
The main feature for December is the battle royale for the best bike of 2012.
The middle of page 30 reads: "The GS is like a big daft Labrador. It doesn't care where it is, it's just happy to be out in the fresh air."

After reading this I decided that "my" GS is no Labrador.... so I named her Dog of War
Ha Ha..... Nothing was going to get in the way of Dog of War.

To my surprise changing the name of something apparently doesn't change its nature...... (sound familiar to any other married men??? )

So being new to the whole adventure scene I am still enjoying this a lot. The previous owner of my GS did 1579km in two years, I have done 1300km in the 8 days that I have had the scooter. This translates into "looking" for stuff to ride through and over etc......

With this in mind, look at Dog of War below. I was travelling in the opposite direction that the bike is now facing. Riding on a dry patch of road and then deciding to move over to the slightly muddy part (because I am now an explorer and conqueror of worlds) was not the best idea I have had.

I had time to take a quick snap with the cell before I saw a family with a caravan behind their car approaching. In one manly expression of raw power (please read as: tried to pick the fat bike up three times) I righted the GS in time to wave the vacationers on their way.

This was the end of Dog of War, welcome back my daft Labrador