Tyres, Brakes and Suspension » Catastrophic shaft/casing failure

I have a friend, Mick who works in London as a specialist courier. He's had a 1200RS for some time now and has been generally very pleased with it. It's just a few miles short of 106,000.

He was heading home last night at about 20mph, just before getting onto a faster road. There was a short spell of knocking from the rear of the bike followed by a collapse of the rear end and a lock up.

He stayed on (I dread to think what might have happened a few minutes later).

Probably a failure of the U/J followed by the destruction of the structural swing arm/casing methinks.

It might be worth checking the U/J for play on high mileage bikes.

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Peter

OMG😯 That's not good.
Is this Mick the Courier who wrote off his z1000sx trying to avoid 2 cyclists in the dark with no lights? He was only posting the other day that the RS is a bike he couldn't brake.

Nasty, and yes it could have turned out really badly for the rider. I once had a gearbox failure and consequent rear wheel lockup on a 1977 Honda CB400F. It was at about 140 kph, but fortunately for me I was on an open dead straight road, and I was able to stay upright and balanced only with the front wheel until I came to a stop. The dangerous thing about such a mechanical failure is that you can't just pull the clutch in and coast to a safe stop because the back wheel is locked solid no matter what. Scary.
Even though this particular bike is obviously out of warranty, I wonder if BMW might be liable to some extent. Or at least show goodwill in terms of covering repair costs.

It could be but I don't remember Mick having a SX.

Wow, scary.
Any indication when the gear oil was last checked/changed?

I think Micks? RS was showing 100k + miles on the odo. His bike have a hard life on the road day in day out.

Mick's daily work puts his bikes through a lot of miles in all sorts of weather. He's a top bloke. I've toured with him in Scotland several times. I know that whether or not the oil is changed in the rear bevel case (he has his bikes serviced regularly) it won't have any real impact on the U/J.

They are 'sealed for life' units and eventually they will fail.

I've had numerous tour's to Scotland, Wales and Northern England with him, as well as rideouts. Real helpful geezer. 😉

Zitat von Sanemancured im Beitrag #8

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They are 'sealed for life' units and eventually they will fail.

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What's the moral of the story here? Anything preventive that may have precluded this, or just a symptom of a high-mileage, hard driven bike? Any instances of relatively youthful RS's doing this?

My 1992 K100RS broke its front U-joint at 48K miles, taking out the inside of the shaft drive tunnel and the entire swing arm. The shaft, swing arm bearings and swing arm case had to be replaced - at my cost, of course. BMW claimed that they had never heard of such a failure and all of the parts had to be imported directly from the factory - apparently because there were none left in BMWNA's warehouses.

Have there been any(many?) examples of drive shaft failure among members here, in the past couple of years? I was reading about drive shaft issues elsewhere (a GS forum) and the ones there seem concentrated in failures due to corrosion, due to water ingress (i.e., ridden in the wet, or ridden through creeks, etc.

Just curious if this issue ever develops in bikes ridden solely in the dry and not flogged to extremes.

Zitat von BEARR im Beitrag #11

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What's the moral of the story here? Anything preventive that may have precluded this, or just a symptom of a high-mileage, hard driven bike? Any instances of relatively youthful RS's doing this?

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