GS1200 Gearbox Blown Up

[JFC]

Mine went on a 2005 gs, 42000 fbmwsh - £3k to sort, included new clutch. Sold it bought a yam s10 online didn't like it now 2010 GSA worrying about g'box. See you can buy them for £400 ish

Good luck

 

[Wilsdorf]

Gearbox new is ...............£1,700 + vat!!! Then the small bits and labour etc etc!!!!!! Wag going to go s/h route but had to fly back to work 2 days after retrieving the bike from Paris, so no time to organise anything!!!!!!!!!!


Mike

Think ours was £2.5k all in to sort out.

Another 2004 bike was caught before it went and that cost £1k.

 

[Flanners]

They are some heavy repair bills....almost worth going for something British or Japenese (possibly Austrian)?

 

[fizzer]

if you need a gearbox send me a message , i have a one stood in my dads garage ,in perfect working order,but i wont be able to get my hands on it for a week as he is in tenerife.
if you want it you can have it for 360 quid delivered.

 

[jwpzx9r]

I am not trolling but they (BMW) must make some absolutely crap gear boxes! There is next to no power going through the thing! A GS gear box should be good for way more than 100,000 miles without problems if it was a bike with mega torque and power then fair enough, but an engine making that kind of output normally requires LESS use of said box. Just my opinion but it appers that BMW are not good when it comes to transmissions, when you take into accout FD probs.

 

[autogs]

i had a 2010 gsa that shat a gearbox bearing a 1200 miles yes twelve hundred

 

[jwpzx9r]

i had a 2010 gsa that shat a gearbox bearing a 1200 miles yes twelve hundred

No excuse for that either shoddy parts or badly assembled either way it should not be happening with a bike costing GSA prices. Could it be that BMW is making these things to very tight profit margins and are compromising the bike by buying in cheap bearings etc to make ends meet? I have to say that since getting my bike I have been very surprised with the problems reported on this site. I think its because I came from a Jap bike background I must have had more than a dozen jap bikes and never had a mechanincal problem with any of them, same goes for my brother who has had way more bikes than me and never a problem, the only problem he ever had was with a Triumph Bonnie... the headlight fell off while he was ripping down the coast road to North Berwick AT NIGHT! Trouser filling moment thgat one

 

[jpooch00]

Does it matter whether the bearings are sealed or not? Sealed bearings are used in applications all over the place including your front wheel. So long as they are packed with the right amount and grade of grease they should be absolutely fine. The fact its sealed should be neither here nor there.

Sadly, that is totally incorrect. Those tranny bearings turn at much higher rates and are subjected to much higher loads, heat etc. than any normal front wheel bearing will ever see. Besides that, when Harley went from serviceable roller bearings to sealed bearings in their wheels, they immediately began having failures that continue to this day. That was never an issue before, as long as the bearings were re-packed occasionally with fresh grease.

Sealing tranny bearings against a readily-available continuous supply of fresh, high grade, high shear lubricant is absolutely nuts! As far as I know, no other transmission uses sealed bearings, nor do they have the failures I'm seeing here. That must mean something. You would think that they would have learned something from the "lubed for life" FD debacle. Apparently not, though.

 

[GS TRV]

I'm not regretting buying a Honda

 

[cookie]

Sealing tranny bearings against a readily-available continuous supply of fresh, high grade, high shear lubricant is absolutely nuts! As far as I know, no other transmission uses sealed bearings, nor do they have the failures I'm seeing here. That must mean something. You would think that they would have learned something from the "lubed for life" FD debacle. Apparently not, though.

airhead gearbox bearings aren't sealed and they seem to fail with some regularity. 1200 gearbox failures don't come up on here that often

 

[jpooch00]

airhead gearbox bearings aren't sealed and they seem to fail with some regularity. 1200 gearbox failures don't come up on here that often

Well, maybe it's just a general deficiency with BMW's ability to ever design a gearbox that's up to the task?

Who knows...

 

[cookie]

i think Getrag designed the 1200 box.

any failure is bad, but really, how many fail? from my readings on this site, not many. not as many as i've seen reports of 11 series stripping splines off their input shafts anyway.

 

[jpooch00]

i think Getrag designed the 1200 box.

Is that a Chinese company??

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Sadly, that is totally incorrect. Those tranny bearings turn at much higher rates and are subjected to much higher loads, heat etc. than any normal front wheel bearing will ever see. Besides that, when Harley went from serviceable roller bearings to sealed bearings in their wheels, they immediately began having failures that continue to this day. That was never an issue before, as long as the bearings were re-packed occasionally with fresh grease.

Sealing tranny bearings against a readily-available continuous supply of fresh, high grade, high shear lubricant is absolutely nuts! As far as I know, no other transmission uses sealed bearings, nor do they have the failures I'm seeing here. That must mean something. You would think that they would have learned something from the "lubed for life" FD debacle. Apparently not, though.

The front wheel bearing was just an example of many thousands of applications of sealed bearings. They are used all over industry in far higher demanding situations than a bike gearbox. My point is that these should not be failing. They will see little more than 100c so if the correct bearing is used packed with the correct grease there is no reason for them to fail. Pick up a bearing manufacturers spec book and you will see what I mean, sealed bearings are not the issue. Piss poor bearing selection or bearings that aren't to spec (lets call them cheap bearings) most likely are the problem.
As an insight, whenever a manufacturer gets a common component failure at a typical mileage this is usually through a design failure. The component that was installed gives up after x amount of cycles and wasn't man enough for the job. Every component has an MTF given to it and should be designed to that time. Think Ford Cortina camshaft or Vauxhal Frontera diff, They all failed at roughly the same mileage.
If a component fails in a random and often early manor then there is generally a problem with quality control of a component or assembly of the component. in this case the bearing specs aren't as tight as they should be or the box is being nailed together badly.
There are some really high mile bikes out there now that have had no gearbox problems what so ever. On the other hand there is a bike above with a 1200 mile failure. This leads me to think it is the second of my two issues that is the cause here but without the number of early fail boxes to number made there will always be an argument that they are random early failures that unfortunately will always happen. I am not saying that is the case here just there is an argument for that if you don't have any data.
For information sake I have had major gearbox failures in Honda X 3, Yamaha X 2 and Kawasaki X 2 never had a Suzuki or BMW box failure but its early days on the BMW. The Honda failures and 1 Kawasaki failure were design faults and the replacement parts were modified.

 

[jpooch00]

The front wheel bearing was just an example of many thousands of applications of sealed bearings. They are used all over industry in far higher demanding situations than a bike gearbox. My point is that these should not be failing. They will see little more than 100c so if the correct bearing is used packed with the correct grease there is no reason for them to fail. Pick up a bearing manufacturers spec book and you will see what I mean, sealed bearings are not the issue. Piss poor bearing selection or bearings that aren't to spec (lets call them cheap bearings) most likely are the problem.
As an insight, whenever a manufacturer gets a common component failure at a typical mileage this is usually through a design failure. The component that was installed gives up after x amount of cycles and wasn't man enough for the job. Every component has an MTF given to it and should be designed to that time. Think Ford Cortina camshaft or Vauxhal Frontera diff, They all failed at roughly the same mileage.
If a component fails in a random and often early manor then there is generally a problem with quality control of a component or assembly of the component. in this case the bearing specs aren't as tight as they should be or the box is being nailed together badly.
There are some really high mile bikes out there now that have had no gearbox problems what so ever. On the other hand there is a bike above with a 1200 mile failure. This leads me to think it is the second of my two issues that is the cause here but without the number of early fail boxes to number made there will always be an argument that they are random early failures that unfortunately will always happen. I am not saying that is the case here just there is an argument for that if you don't have any data.
For information sake I have had major gearbox failures in Honda X 3, Yamaha X 2 and Kawasaki X 2 never had a Suzuki or BMW box failure but its early days on the BMW. The Honda failures and 1 Kawasaki failure were design faults and the replacement parts were modified.

IMHO the fact is, sealed bearings have no place in motorcycle transmissions, period.

Why the Beemerco decided to spec a tranny with sealed bearings is a total mystery to me, just like so many other things they've done over the years that resulted in failures, strandings and costly repairs for their loyal customers.

I'm NOT necessarily bashing BMW - just stating the facts as I see them. If others disagree with my opinion, that's fine and of course I respect their right to do so. Everybody has the right to believe anything they want.

I do wholeheartedly agree with you that BMW makes some piss-poor choices regarding the components they use to build these bikes and really I think that we're actually on roughly the same page, but just looking at it from different perspectives.

Cheers

 

[cookie]

but you're not quoting any facts at all. it's all just opinion.

 

[jpooch00]

but you're not quoting any facts at all. it's all just opinion.

IMO they're facts, IYO they're opinions. That's your opinion - so what?

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

well BMW didnt spec those bearings, they wanted a box that worked in a certain way. Gertrac use the bearings because they perform the way BMW wanted the box I.E a fast slowdown on the shafts. By the way Gertrac car gearboxes use sealed bearings as well. There may be other factors in that to supply enough oil to the bearings a pump and feed system would be needed or more oil in the box but I don't know if any of those theories actually hold.

 

[cookie]

IMO they're facts, IYO they're opinions. That's your opinion - so what?

facts are not dependant on opinions. that's the point

 

[jpooch00]

well BMW didnt spec those bearings, they wanted a box that worked in a certain way. Gertrac use the bearings because they perform the way BMW wanted the box I.E a fast slowdown on the shafts. By the way Gertrac car gearboxes use sealed bearings as well. There may be other factors in that to supply enough oil to the bearings a pump and feed system would be needed or more oil in the box but I don't know if any of those theories actually hold.

But surely BMW's "Superior German Engineers" signed off on the design as acceptable and up to the task at hand for those "unstoppable" bikes? Maybe not though. Who knows?

I guess that WOULD give them a good excuse for the failures though, Ie: "Hey, don't blame us, WE didn't design it"!