Maybe some of you remember me writing about my friend's woe and travail with his '07 R1150R. It started with a final drive failure. David couldn't afford the $2000 price tag quoted by the Fort Collins BMW dealer. After a long search he found a 77,000-mile final drive for $300. Part of the difficulty in finding the part was that nearly all the R-bikes had different part numbers for the final drive. Even the '07 R1150R had two different part numbers, depending on whether or not the bike had ABS. He thought that had solved his problem, but then the bike started popping and backfiring and finally just dying after a few miles on the road. The non-BMW BMW shop in Fort Collins told him it would take $800 to get it fixed. (I don't remember what their "diagnosis" was.)
Turned out to be a bad battery. That kept him on the road for a couple of months and then it started doing about the same thing. It just sat for the next several months and is now rolling again. It turned out that the stick coils (I'm not sure that's the right term) were both bad. That repair only cost him $700. But we've got a ride planned for tomorrow!
Another guy going with us is a man who's here working on rehabbing a rental property. Somebody told him he ought to meet me and he'd dropped into my office a couple of weeks ago. He told me that he had a BMW at his house in Portland. John's a retired electrical engineer. This Thursday he came to see me again. He'd just gotten back to Fort Morgan after flying back to Portland to pick up his bike and riding it back to Colorado. The trip took him two days.
He was showing me his bike and started talking about his disgust with BMW's electrical systems, a problem I haven't heard too much about. He told me that several times he's had switchgear issues. The worst had been with the starter switch. He had had to push the bike back to a dealer after his bike wouldn't start. The dealer tried it and it started. The dealer told him he hadn't heard of any issues with the starter switch and that he should go ahead with his trip. So, John rode to Florida from somewhere in California and 2800 miles later the bike wouldn't start. He got towed to a BMW dealer and was told that BMW had lots of issues with starter switches and that the dealer in California should have replaced it. The guy in Florida did replace it. But John's still convinced that BMWs have issues. He likes the bike, but doesn't trust it.
Turned out to be a bad battery. That kept him on the road for a couple of months and then it started doing about the same thing. It just sat for the next several months and is now rolling again. It turned out that the stick coils (I'm not sure that's the right term) were both bad. That repair only cost him $700. But we've got a ride planned for tomorrow!
Another guy going with us is a man who's here working on rehabbing a rental property. Somebody told him he ought to meet me and he'd dropped into my office a couple of weeks ago. He told me that he had a BMW at his house in Portland. John's a retired electrical engineer. This Thursday he came to see me again. He'd just gotten back to Fort Morgan after flying back to Portland to pick up his bike and riding it back to Colorado. The trip took him two days.
He was showing me his bike and started talking about his disgust with BMW's electrical systems, a problem I haven't heard too much about. He told me that several times he's had switchgear issues. The worst had been with the starter switch. He had had to push the bike back to a dealer after his bike wouldn't start. The dealer tried it and it started. The dealer told him he hadn't heard of any issues with the starter switch and that he should go ahead with his trip. So, John rode to Florida from somewhere in California and 2800 miles later the bike wouldn't start. He got towed to a BMW dealer and was told that BMW had lots of issues with starter switches and that the dealer in California should have replaced it. The guy in Florida did replace it. But John's still convinced that BMWs have issues. He likes the bike, but doesn't trust it.
