"Maybe if you get two worthy bikes and one bad one, you're that much more likely to come back for a fourth and fifth. "

Hi Mark,

Don't get me wrong. I have had 3 of these bikes now. I have had trouble with all of them but thats what you get when you ride these bikes hard across the world through different climates and terrains putting tens of thousands of KM up on them in a short time. I still like the bikes and when they are working they are great but when the break and there is nothing you can do about it other than take them to a BMW garage then they suck. I had a mechanic completely check the bike over before he towed me the 200km back to Lima. He tried everything he could to get it going on the side of the road but had to give up because EWS shuts the bike down. That is the only reason I went to BMW. Trust me when I'm at home I never go near them.

I never expect everything when travelling to be hunky dory and go to plan. Breaking down is always an adventure within the adventure. I know now that I was foolish to expect BMW to provide me with the service they claim to provide. I just want to let people know about it so they'll know what they can expect.



To answer your question Dave I really had no expectations of Peru before riding in there. I travel to see the world, to meet the people and then I form opinions on a place I guess. I never expect anything. I have ridden through parts of the world that people said I was crazy to go to and found out the people in these countries to be the most hospitable on earth, namely Iran and Pakistan.

I guess I felt pressured to get this part myself because the garage wasn't too helpful about getting it. They said it was necessary but maybe it was an expensive part for them to have to outlay for. They told me to get it if I could saying it would be much faster for you. I was encouraged to get it myself. I was not able to hang around Lima and wait for 6 weeks. If that had been the case I would have had to call off the trip and ship the bike home. I guess I had a westernised opinion of the BMW garage when I saw it for sure. It is just like any garage you would come across in Europe/USA, coffee machines an all. So yes I did expect them to act professionally. just goes to show you shouldn't take anything at face value I guess.

Thanks for ye're input guys. I do appreciate it and I have let the issue go. I'm riding from Nordkapp to Cape Town this year and I'm a little paranoid about taking this bike. If it leaves me broken down in the middle of Africa I'm going to douse it in petrol.

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Ride on
Kev

The first generation of BMW bikes with can could communicate with obd2 readers, i saw it done on an 1150. There is nothing special about bike systems except a deliberate lockout of independent dealers via weird plugs. You can just cut these off. There were also a few bike specific codes that the reader could not describe but could be decoded by hand. The 'needs to talk to Berlin' thing is BMW justifying the huge cost to their dealer network, if you don't get updates you just fall behind, the atmosphere will not catch fire, your manhood will not shrivel up, no puppies will die.

There is no advantage I can see to can on a bike to the owner. There are lots of advantages to bmw the biggest of which is that like any out of warranty consumer electronic you won't be using it in 20 years time.

The drive shaft claim will have worth recording!

Andy

i work with MAN lorries they too are on canbus. the ecu units we do not keep in stock for any lorry they are special ordered in from germany as the have a shelf life of about 2 months after that they wont work so when a truck ecu goes down we order it germany load the ecu to that specific truck we have to fit it within 2 months but we program it in the workshop to the truck. it has to talk to germany and the other ecu's on the truck. some of the big trucks have 11 ecu's running it. so i can see that if bmw are the same its just a way of keeping joe public out and they can charge what they like

The man ebs ECU has the vehicle configuration in it, anything from a 4x2 to a 10x4 which it needs for the load sensing function. Once plugged in it's only calibrating the inputs. The ecas has 2 to 5 axles of which 3 might lift, it needs to know air bag pressures related to weights. The engines are mechanically the same, the power and so on is programmed. The gearbox ECU needs telling about pto's, diff locks and so on. The suppliers all have software that can turn from blank to vehicle specific, you can guess most of what they won't tell you. The expiry is news to me. There is no clock in the brake or suspension ECU, could be the diagnostic software that is set to stuff it up if the serial number or software version has dropped off a list. That would be a useful commercial feature, but they'll blame safety, you don't want a 42 tonner on 6 axles thinking it's a parcel van and deciding to ignored the trailer and lift axle brakes.

On a truck it makes some sense. On a bike the variations are mechanically rather less significant, the electric windscreen won't kill you.

Andy

None of this leaves me feeling inspired to buy a new bike, ever.

But.....I own a new-ish car (2010 model year). It's probably got all the same stuff on board, and I expect it'll run fine for a couple of hundred thousand miles. Why doesn't it work that way with bikes?

Mark

Hi KevOk
I must admit i have to agree with Mark here,I could understand if that bike was just a few weeks old and you had some issues on the way down.But just trying to put on BMW an "maybe" miss fix from a previous owner or mechanik is just unfair i think.
I am not a BMW rider today(used to own and ride the best BMW, R-80G/S PD).
And more i went from boxers into thumpers.KSAP(keep simple as posible)
I ride an 85 Tenere!(completely overhault)
One has to make choices,to much technology on an continent you maybe personaly don´t know much could be challengeing.
Those "hightech" bikes are like smartphones.....
I have met riders with 1200 GSA that did the same trip on brand new bikes with 0 issues.Others with drive shaft problems or blown shocks......
I would just add no person was harmed or injured on the trip? Just enjoy the tales and pictures.......relax and plan with easy mind the next adventure! Remember adventure means challenge!
Ride safe

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The family car does not get taken on rough roads for long distances at speed when loaded. The wiring system on the car does not get flexed through the steering head of the motorcycle. Ok it may have wheel sensors that do get flexed with suspension movement - bet they are replaced as a service item at some mileage.. it is not on the motorcycle service scheduled.

Most of the adventure bikes don't see adventure - thus bm and others get away with things. If you look at the paris dackar vehicles - you won't see much in the way of standard things. Some of this is performance related, but some is reparability and reliability!

My family cars definitely get taken on rough roads for long distances at speed--loaded and not, and at higher speeds than I ride my bike on those roads because the consequences of failure or misjudgment are less severe in the car. I get a few more flats than I would otherwise, and sometimes trash steering or suspension components more rapidly, but in the main my rather low-end cars and pickup trucks have been remarkably durable over the last couple of decades (it wasn't always so, I'll admit).

I wonder about the flexing-of-wires issue, too. I've got a lot of little wires in my car steering column, many of them attached to the wheel itself, which rotates a couple of revolutions in either direction. The mechanism is designed to keep them from flexing, fraying, breaking, abrading, and it works. I'd be shocked if it didn't.

I think a lot of these issues are choices made by manufacturers, and accepted by we, the paying customers. No car-buyer--much less an airplane pilot--would accept known issues like the KLR's balancer mechanism failures (or others you could name for any brand of bike out there). There's nothing inherent in motorcycle design which requires that reliability and build quality be atrocious, at least by automotive, marine or aeronautical standards.

Mark

I appreciate your candid explanation.

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Dave

Cars and trucks seem to be built to a different standard. The numbers and value allow more work to be put in and it shows.

My automotive work was centred round Leyland, a component of DAF-Paccar group. Leyland made 10000 trucks a year, basically bigger and smaller versions of one type they designed and another type DAF in Holland worked on. DAF in Holland made ten times the number of vehicles and Paccar in the US used a lot of the same building block systems. The smallest parts were technically the same as on any truck in the world, some with 20 years of usage. We got a new brake system about every ten years and made adjustments maybe every three. People buying the truck really expected it to work, we had vehicles that had run with four drivers 23.5 hours a day, 365 days a year. The buyers didn't care less if the next years version had radial upsidedown whatevers. Our trips to the Alps for wear testing and Finland for cold performance work were justifiable and included in the costs.

BMW motorcycles make fewer units than Leyland, in four significantly distinct types. They cannot buy the same components as other bigger manufacturers (although they are trying) and combine component development costs because no one else makes one like it. The market demands year on year changes and is caught up on technical detail, but the majority of it is never really used. Most BMW owners want to be able to talk about the ice detection system which turns on the heated seat via the improved CAN V4.63 with integrated non-wireless linkages. Few BMW riders actually use it every day in winter for hours and hours. Much as they are a boutique brand and can charge more, it isn't massively more and they spent the money on weird castings for a flat twin motor and funny front end, not sending bikes out on test.

Nissan or Ford have the same development costs spread over multiples of ten more vehicles.

I would worry less about your car or truck, it is designed and tested for the 99th percentile user. I would buy your bikes from the biggest manufacturers or ones that gave themselves the easiest development tasks by running that heated seat off a switch, not via a decision point in the central CAN node that also has the authority to kill the ignition to avoid any risk of burning a lawyers ****. I never buy a bike that someone else hasn't tried to break first in the real world, which means the model wasn't launched this year. They could design a bike with both the features and reliability but the market would never accept the price.

Andy

So what you're saying really is that people like Kev (the OP) are doing BMWs testing for them in more rigorous conditions than you'd generally find in Europe and they also have to pay for replacement parts out of their own pocket when they go wrong.

Win-win for BMW but it does rely on us, the user, being daft about bikes, unlike the truck fleet operator who simply has to make a commercial decision.

Everyone talking about the more general theme has gone to the pub!
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...ravel-on-70769

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Dave

See post number 49 in here for the status of CANbus technology as fitted to BMW motorcycles:-
http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hub...enture-70391-4

Perhaps this thread should be in the BMW tech forum; it doesn't relate to "which bike" and because BMW is leading where other manufacturers will tend to follow.

Some of the earlier posts remind me of the last time I was inside a Citreon workshop (one of those smaller ones where you can talk directly with the mechanics); the more junior staff were cursing the electronics and the readouts on the diagnostics equipment while the "old hand" was bemoaning how he was going to break the bad news to the car owner who had absolutely no idea what lies under the bonnet.

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Dave

I can only speak from my own personal experience. I would not buy another BMW. I've had four, three new and one used. I'll make it short(ish) as the more I think about them the more my blood boils! I had an F650GS which I bought new in 2004. The bike would cut out on the over run and would take an age to start. It cut out in London traffic on roundabouts and on the last occasion, whilst filtering between lanes 2 and 3 of the M4 in rush hour traffic. On that occasion I was nearly killed. The dealer had the bike in their possession more than I had it in mine. As the bike was new I wrote to the dealer and BMW UK and told them that I was rejecting the bike as dangerous. I was offered a new bike or my money back. I took the money. A few bikes later I bought a second hand R100GS for an RTW. I spent a fortune having the subframe strengthened and other mods for the trip. In Northern Italy the gear lever return spring broke and final drive began leaking. The bike had covered 18,000 miles. The next BMW was an R1150RT which I bought new. The clocks steamed up in heavy rain and there was a fault with ABS light which randomly illuminated. PX'D this for a new 1200GS. Ignition faults, final drive leaks and failure of the servo brakes. Corrosion on the alternator cover, engine casings, frame and wheels after 6000 miles and five months. My NTV650 was half the cost of the 1200GS and completed in excess of 100,000 miles without fault. My Africa Twin (which I've owned for ten years concurrently with other bikes) completed 157,000 miles without any major issues.

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