I broke the sub frame on my bike the other day. I was returning from Batopilas in the Copper Canyon and starting feeling a lot of vibration. I stopped and the only thing I noticed was the rear mud flap had broken. This I thought was from a rock or the rough road. When I got to the pavement the vibration was really bad. I went the 60 km back to Creel and my hotel and looked at the bike better. The seat had unlatched and when I removed it I noticed the broken frame.
I took a digital picture for everyone to look at http://jkam.home.att.net/jaysgs.html
Has anyone seen the frame break here? I am familiar with the transmission casing breaking and I've seen the small hoop part of the frame break but never in this location. I've decided to replace the sub frame and possibly reinforce it better. Looking at the picture it broke just in front of the place BMW decided to stop reinforcement of the frame.
Oh yeah, the picture of the bike really loaded was a one time 2400 km trip on mostly paved roads. My usual load is about 65 kg and little ole me at 70 kg so I'm not exceeding the bikes limits.
What would you do to make it better?

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Safe Travels

Jay Kaminsky
Happily Homeless
http://jkam.home.att.net

It's a known fault on the GS range. I'm in Kathmandu and have just bumped into a guy on an R1150GS whose sub-frame snapped in exactly the same place a few weeks ago whilst he was in India. He's had a strengthening strip welded along the tube to stop it happening again.
I'm riding a R100GS and had the sub-frame rebuilt and strengthened when I had my pannier frames made. If you want to see the pics go to our site www.chasingthesun.org and click on the link on the bottom left corner.
Harvey

[This message has been edited by harvey (edited 05 March 2002).]