You will hardly find a bike bigger then 200cc. The chains are not the correct sizes and the quality is poor.

If changing a chaine and sprokets is maintenance ,why do we call working on a drive shaft a failure.I saw many chaines breaking and many sprokets loosing teeth but I took it for a normal part of the life of a part.

Forgive my ignorance if you don't understand me

I suppose that's the best argument for using a small capacity bike, e.g. a Honda C90 Cub or a tough Suzuki 125, for going into the really desolate places. For Africa, leave your GS back home :-)

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HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

I have more then 70kkm in Africa on the same bike, no shaftfailures;-)

I have no problem understanding you. Since I started to drive BMW people have told me that shaft fails (often in catastrophic ways) but all the problems with chain and sprockets are maintenance.

It’s one of the myths, and it looks like it’s important to keep it alive.

There, there. There are no such things as right or wrong when it comes to shaft or chain/sprocket. Go for whatever makes you feel comfortable and what will leave you in the shallowest shit if anything should go wrong. Which it usually does, sooner or later.

Now, I'm a Guzzi-head and have no problems with shaft drives on bikes. On the contrary. But sometimes when the u-joint starts bugging me seriously I envision this:

A BMW paralever shaft:



A set of chain and sprockets:



Now call me a mythologist or whatever, but somehow the latter picture seems in general more Africa-friendly in a way. Not saying that there aren't shafts out there which withstands everything, I mean, people have been riding shaft bikes since dog-knows-when and I know that e.g. my Guzzi's shafts are so solid. But IF something goes bust, I'd like to be the one with a chain/sprocket bike and a spare set on my bike to replace it. Nothing against the one or the other - just gut feeling.

Someday they'll invent chain & shaft drive just to prevent discussions like this ;-)

__________________
HansP
All you wanted to know
about riding in Norway

One thing has struck me about BMW final drives is that they are trying to put too much horsepower through a single sided swing arm .The design did not change from the airheads to the 1150 .The boost in horsepower for the 1150 brought the problem of overloaded FD s to light .
Even a redesign for the 1200 did not make the problem go away ,the splined hubs seem to wear fast .
Sidecar specialist builders and desert racers have favoured putting an auxiliary second arm on the rear of the bike to strengthen up the rear end and "take the strain" off the FD .
Seems like a damn good idea to me and certainly something I would consider if I wanted to load a big beemer up to the nuts and abuse it on bad roads .

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Blessed are the cracked, for they let in the light. - Spike Milligan
"When you come to a fork in the road ,take it ! When you come to a spoon in the road ,take that also ."

This is not clear for me AliBaba !
Mine is a 96 R80 GS Basic and I am not sure if I need a servicable/greasable driveshaft for it as it is at 50K kms now. Or if it is a good solution?
I don't know if it is helpful carying U joints for that too ! Technically a bit poor yet

__________________
"where the traveller goes, nobody knows ! "

Yes that’s exactly true! They are different but what suits you it’s up to you.
What makes me fed up is that people with no experience about one of them tell everyone it’s shit.


Nice picture!
It might look advanced, but it’s just a shaft and a beveldrive, much less advanced then what you find in cars and people go everywhere with cars.


I see your point and lot of people think like you, but if you are willing to carry chain and sprocket then remember a shaft is lighter.

Would have been nice! Winter-project for your Guzzi?



The design of the swing-arm has changed, and on 11xx/1200 you will hardly find a shaft-failure. But you will find FD-failures. I’m not sure if that’s progress.
They are trying to reduce unsprung weight (and cost), but they might have gone a bit too far.
The first 1200s had problems. It’s better now but I don’t think it’s cured.
The beveldrive is a very simple construction (2 moving parts and 2 bearings) and if it is designed properly it can hold hundreds of hp.
The K1300S (175 hp) has a single sided swing-arm.



I don’t know much about sidecars but on desert racers they have not used double sided swing-arms since the G/S It ended production more then 20 years ago.
Nowadays Moto Guzzi and BMW use paralever swingarms and I’ve never seen a double sided paralever.
Even HPNs Paris-Dakar version of the 1150 used a single sided swingarm.

It’’s not easy to say. When my Basic had 88kk I started a 50kkm trip with the original shaft. The shaft finally broke 1 year after my return.

If you are planning to do a bigger trip I would have removed the shaft and inspected it. It’s nice to know how to remove it anyway…
The price of rebuilding it to a serviceable shaft is lower then buying a new one. Spare u-joints can be attached to your frame under the tank. I’m not sure how long time the rebuild takes.

Hope this helps…

If you are going to make something, copy MZ. A simple but well made grease gaiter gives 50,000 miles plus using industrial chair. You can change the chain in an hour using tools you'd carry on the bike (it can have a split link chain because they used a bigger chain than 23 hp needs).

The key design factor is that the engine has a built in lip for the gaiter, it isn't an afterthought. Nailed on gaiters just don't work.

Chains in Africa are readily available, BUT, they are not your gold standard X-ringed motorcycle jobs. The Bonnevilles O-ring chain is on 15000 miles half with the sidecar and a decent chunk in mud/snow. It'll go to probably 25,000. I'd expect a heavy duty X-ring, set up by me from day one and without the period before I sorted my oiler, to hit 30,000 miles. An industrial chain (and worse, hard to replace sprockets, Africa wise) would be gone in under half of that. I can get Industrial chain for about a tenth of the cost, but the sprocket wear makes it uneconomic in Europe never mind practical in Africa.

Can't the GS have a grease nipple fitted to help things?

Andy

To fit a grease nipple you have to change (or rebuild) the u-joints.
It’s possible to do this on a standard shaft but the u-joints are not meant to be replaced so
it’s not a roadside repair.
The shaft can be rebuilt so it’s easy to change u-joints and then you can use grease-nipples. A friend of mine did this and it looks good!

My GS had two of those failures though...

100.000 km each.

Yes, and that’s interesting!

The first I one I can understand because the first 1100s had a weak shaft. I wonder what shaft was refitted.

A friend of mine broke a shaft on one of the first 1100GS after a jump in 130 km/h.
He went to BMW, gave them the information they wanted (year of production, type of bike etc) and the BMW-guy started to order the “old” shaft. By accident he got corrected by another BMW-guy so he got the “new” shaft. But it was close…

Maybe the same happened to you?
In my ETK (part-diagram) this is corrected now.

so, new shafts will never die?