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...
