Seems strange people want to dispense with the servo ABS. My daughter's 2006 Ford KA had her abs fail due to the electronic control, apparently its quite common on the KA and Fiesta/focus. Cost around £1200 to fix. people grumble but pay up. Here we are with top of the range bikes and the talk is of junking it rather than repair. I have had ABS/Servo since 2001 and not a bean of trouble. If mine failed now I would look for repair/replacement, obviously at cheapest price I could. I like the servo and the ABS features though I would just settle for ABS. There is no way I'd let my daughter drive without abs so why should I?
What part normally fails on these systems?
Well firstly, as far as I know car servo units are a totally different kettle of fish. They are generally a seperate unit, vacuum operated, pretty simple in design and generally ubber reliable. The ABS control is then a seperate electronic unit, which can fail, but wouldn't require the servo replacing to fix the abs. I'll stand corrected if someone knows otherwise on a specific make or model of car.
The one BMW fit is all in one, electric servo and abs unit, thats not servicable on the whole. When they fail you basically have no brakes. Quite how they got away with it is beyond me. And although they dismiss the problems, they seem to have dropped the idea now

No other bike manufacterer seems to have any such issues, as none have seen the need to use such a device.
An ABS unit (from an 1100 or 1150) is absolutely non compatable in any way shape or form with a servo/abs unit.
I'm surprised at that. This guy is talking about an 1150, I'd understand if he was talking about a 1200, but a servo'd 1150 is still basically the same as an 1100 or early 1150. Now I had one a while back, but a non abs 2000 model. Now I'd assume that if mine had had abs, somewhere under the seat or tank there'd have been an abs controller, with all the brake pipes from front and rear master cylinders in and for the calipers out of it. Wasn't the later servo abs unit in the same place? I'd guess it would need all the pipes changed or altered, and I would imagine some splicing of the wiring would be needed.
It would need a better man than I to suss all that out, but there are guys like you out there that I would have thought were more than capable of such challenges.
At the end of the day it doesn't affect me. My 850 doesn't have either and I'm fine about that, I'd much rather rely on my observation skills than trust in a piece of technology so known to fail. If one day I do move on and end up with a later model, i'd just remove it, but that would only happen if it was a deal I couldn't refuse
