The first thing I would say to anyone experiencing gearbox problems is don’t ride the bike until you’ve found out what the problem is. If it turns out to be just a linkage problem then great, if it doesn’t then if far safer not to ride.
I started to experience a metallic ticking noise when letting the clutch out in neutral on Friday afternoon after a 350 mile ride up the A1. The noise, although a little concerning, wasn’t too bad so I decided to continue with my trip around Scotland. The noise got progressively worse over the course of the following day and I also started to hear a whine from the gearbox which I had read about but never experienced before. Towards the end of the day I started to experience problems shifting between 5 and 6th. The bike has previously suffered with jumping out of E shortly after changing up and had occasionally failed to down change but it was happening all the time now. I could also hear a grating noise coming from the gearbox. At this point I really should have stopped riding the thing but being an idiot I decided to carry on. The following day after another 200 miles I went to change into 5th and found nothing other than a nasty noise. 5th gear had quite simply disappeared. All other gears appeared to be fine. I rode the bike 200 miles back to the hotel using mainly 4th and E which was interesting. Double up-changing from 4th to E was fine but going down from E to 4th was almost impossible – lots of nasty noises and a good 10 seconds to find the gear. The following day I decided to limp the bike for the rest of the trip. I mainly cruised at about 55mph in 4th but occasionally up-shifted to E for stints of 80mph. Coming into a 30mph limit, I down changed and the gearbox and rear wheel locked solid. I skidded to a stop. A couple of mates helped me drag the bike off the road and I called recovery. Getting a GS with a locked rear wheel into the back of a transit van proved to be an interesting experience as did the 600 mile drive south!
In retrospect, I was very very lucky, prior to the gearbox seizing in the 30mph limit I had been riding an extremely twisty national speed limit road – if it had gone bang then I would have been in serious trouble. A few mates did warn me not to ride but I decided to ignore their advice. The gearbox had just over 30,000 miles on it, admittedly I haven’t been the most sympathetic of riders – I’ve pulled the odd wheelie, ridden the bike offroad and given it a fair amount of stick on the road but still I feel that 30,000 miles is simply not good enough. Prior to buying the GS I had owned numerous Honda Africa Twins – I gave my Africa’s far more abuse than the GS ever gets, did 3 times the mileage and never once experienced a problem. It seems BMW gearboxes simply aren’t up to the job and quite frankly they’re bloody dangerous – I could have quite easily have ended up dead. I’d go back to Honda but the GS is just so much fun to ride.
Luckily I have a spare gearbox waiting in the garage – I saw it advertised online last year and having read about gearbox problems on this site and the ADVrider site I thought it would be a wise purchase. I also have a GS riding mate who’s going to help me change the gearbox over. It’s going on tonight so I’ll report back once it’s sorted.
My bike isn’t in warranty and has no dealer servicing so it’s not really worth me complaining to the dealer but if you experience any gearbox problems as described above and your bike is warranty or has FSH, print out this thread, take it to your dealer and demand a new gearbox – you are risking your life if you don’t.
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Pop some grease in each end & put it back together
