Help Please! Stuck in Cairo w/ GS
 

I'm currently riding a mostly stock '01 R1150GS thru the middle east. bike has recently developed clattering sound after warm up (sound appears to be coming from valves, louder on left side), also lacks power...bike appears to run fine when cold, except for occasionaly being starved for oil on start up...dunno if this is an issu but i've been running low octane leaded fuel about 50% of fill ups for past 3 weeks ...any help is appreciated...no beemer mechanics within 1000 miles :-( thanks!

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"Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed."

Oilheads aren't my area of expertise, sorry!

BUT I'd suggest contacting the HU Cairo Community for some help. They can get you sorted if they're in town.

Just go to the Community page / Contact

best of luck,

Grant

HU Community guys in Cairo are very good.

There is also a BMW car dealership about 6kms out of downtown Cairo, on the ring road heading towards New Cairo & Qatamia Heights (a residential development). From memory, I thought I saw a few new bikes in the window, so maybe there is someone in the dealership with a little experience with the GS? Might be worth looking them up.

Most probably the valve clearances aren't correct!

Check the valve clearances if they are in right measure or not. (0.15mm for intake valves, 0.30mm for exhaust valves - on COLD engine!)

You can do it yourself or with proffessional assistance in any bike shop, doesn't have to be BMW, manual you can get here if doing your own (well i can do it myself aside the road less than 15 minutes if i have to - just it takes a little practice and take feeler gauges with you, they take very little room http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/ubb/smile.gif)

http://advwisdom.hogranch.com/Wisdom...aintenance.pdf

My 1100GS also got valve clearances out of place after running lot of miles on poor quality fuel - any bike need some valve check and readjustment after lot of miles anyway, my GS took 17Kkm of abuse anyway, did some very bad noise on hard acceleration, but didn't missed a beat till the end. Also run one full tank of carbon-washer trhough - pistons and cylinder heads may have too much carbon build-up due poor fuel quality also causing so called "pinging", wash them out with special fuel chemicals to be sure!

Do you have catalything converter and lambda (O2) sensor equipped GS? If yes, then they are damaged if you've run lot of miles on leaded petrol, and "poisoned" lambda sensor can also cause wrong timing problems making those strange noises.

Is the engine temperature normal while running warm (4-6 bars or Rider Information Display)? If not then also it's possible you have temperature sensor malfunction that causes Motronic brain to do wrong injection and TDC timing calculations according to engine's real temperature.

Cheers, Margus

[This message has been edited by Margus (edited 06 February 2006).]

I have a 2002 R1150GS and I suspect the clattering sound when hot is the left cam chain tensioner. I had the same problem before I replaced the tensioner with the BMW updated model. It is a common problem on 1150GS's, you can read about it at advrider.com.

It sounds like a bag of rocks when hot and the left side seems to be the one that has the problem. My understanding is that it is not a problem if you wait to get it fixed...it is noisy but there will be no damage. BMW has come out with an upgraded cam tensioner design that fixes the problem. I changed mine out about two months ago and it eliminated all the noise.

Changing the tensioner is about a 45 minute job. There is also a procedure posted at advrider.com under the "hall of wisdom".

Good luck.

As otehr have said - check the valve clearences - the exhaust in particular.

The lambda sensor is used to dertermine the amount of fuel to inject - not the timing. As i understand it a failed lambda sensor should cause rich running (more fuel) that would cause no harm (other than more fuel consumption).

Unless the engine gets really really hot (or the brain thinks it is) the engine temperature won't change the timing, the amount of fuel injected yes but not the timing. If it is really hot the timing will be reduced a little - that should reduce any tendancy to 'ping' and hopefully cool the motor too.

Timing is normally done off the engine speed and throttle position.

I've never experienced engine temperature sensor problems, but i've experienced the 'bad noise' problems as i mentioned - the valve clearances were OK, but on hard acceleration engine did very bad noise and it sure were the valves, not the cam chain or anything mechanical in gearbox etc. So i guess it was from the poinsoned lambda sensor (and/or stuck CAT), engine temperature was OK (5-6 bars), and it also did it only on warm engine, not cold. Also it may be carbon-build up, but sure the timing was seemingly a "bit early" (that what i mean under wrong timing - not that it's notable wrong, but you can sense it's wrong A BIT, but enough to make valves do bad sound on hard acceleration). Anything else i couldn't think of.

So guessing it might be the same problem?

I also rided in very hot conditions (more than +40C in august month in Iran), so this is where i got the temperature idea too, but i think it was very little probability the temperature sensor malfunctioned - it did show from 0 to 6 bars, and on the city it grow till 7 or even 8.

[This message has been edited by Margus (edited 07 February 2006).]

The cairo BMW car dealer mentioned above was v helpful when i did my tour of the world's BMW dealerships between 1999 and 2002. I recall the chief mechanic was bike qualified too.

I had some parts posted to them and they paid the courier the import tax that was owing. I paid them back, of course, but this did save a huge amount of time dealing with Egypt customs.

HTH and good luck,
Chris

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TheBrightStuffDotCom

Greetings all...just wanted to thank everyone for the helpful information....i checked valve clearance as soon as the problem developed, they were slightly off but no impreovement after adjustment...the Beemer dealer here no longer services bikes but he refered me to the Yam dealer who used to do Beemers...he reckons i have a con rod problem and need to get the bike to a proper dealer for service as no parts are available in egypt :-( looks like i'll be shipping the bike to turkey or kuwait....their is a dealer in tel aviv but parts are taxed @ 300% which makes repair too expensive...thanks again for the kind replies...Rock On!

Where ever you order parts contact the seller first - you may get a deal they put the "real value" of the parts times lower price that it originally is and include the check with this much lower price also with the package they are sending to you so you can show it to the customs and you have to pay a lot less tax. Just explain your situation to the seller, it's doable on most cases - the parts seller can send the "real" check with real price to your home address afterall if they need to put the real check through their computer system - a "fake" one (with much lower price) they can create one piece of paper always separately just like it never existed for their own paperwork.

Also few guys mentioned here to order parts via some company (bike shop or BMW etc) so they pay the duty, just it's a lot easyer for you - no paperwork for you at least if you don't want to hassle with the first cheaper method.

But i'd try the first method first if it was me and especially if the parts are expensive ones.

DHL, UPS, FeDex all work worldwide and stuff at your place in few days (those most expensive service options) if you're in hurry.

Good luck!

[This message has been edited by Margus (edited 08 February 2006).]

If you can do the repair yourself with a workshop manual and tools, I would strongly suggest that you get the parts sent to you, rather than shipping you and the bike somewhere else.

I looked around for a long time to try and get a decent shipping / flight deal for a bike out of Egypt, before I gave up due to the hassle and cost, and instead rode it around the Middle East instead.

Ask your embassy whether they will let you send parts in diplomatic luggage. This insures they arrive and no duty payable.