Rear Wheel Bearing Failure

[BBB61]

I finally had a call back from BMW service this morning to tell me that they had spoken to Benham of Wolverhampton's service manager who said bearings are service items which can be expected to fail at any mileage and I should have taken out their extended warranty!
He went on to explain that the cost (£420) is at a level that the dealer is expected to deal with goodwill claims and Benhams are unwilling to make any offer. In view of this there is nothing they can (will) do.
So there you are these bearings are service items.
I think half the problem is Benhams are primarily a car dealership who don't give a toss about bikes, its just a little earner.
Now who can help out with details of a decent independent who can replace this bearing at a reasonable cost? Or is it a job I can do myself? I dont have a fully equiped workshop but I've replaced clutches, brakes etc on jap bikes before.
The bike is an 09 (july 2009).

As the bike is only just out of warranty I would suggest contacting Tim Abbott, the BMW(GB) managing director.

[email protected]

 

[Ugly Cow]

Inner bearing is a taper roller bearing which is designed to take a side loading and vertical loading, outer bearing is a conventional ball roller bearing designed to take a vertical load only. Incorrect shimming from the factory will put excesive side load on the outer bearing which cannot withstand the imposed load. If this is the case then replacing the bearing (almost all dealers) will change nothing and failure will reoccur. It must be shimmed correctly

 

[red1]

Inner bearing is a taper roller bearing which is designed to take a side loading and vertical loading, outer bearing is a conventional ball roller bearing designed to take a vertical load only. Incorrect shimming from the factory will put excesive side load on the outer bearing which cannot withstand the imposed load. If this is the case then replacing the bearing (almost all dealers) will change nothing and failure will reoccur. It must be shimmed correctly

Isn't the answer to replace the bearing with a taper-roller?
Used to do it all the time with headstock bearings on 80's Jap bikes.

 

[BBB61]

Inner bearing is a taper roller bearing which is designed to take a side loading and vertical loading, outer bearing is a conventional ball roller bearing designed to take a vertical load only. Incorrect shimming from the factory will put excesive side load on the outer bearing which cannot withstand the imposed load. If this is the case then replacing the bearing (almost all dealers) will change nothing and failure will reoccur. It must be shimmed correctly

Not even if the dealer shims it correctly?

 

[bsogri]

Bearings are straight roller bearings with no preload adjustment apart from shims

 

[Rasher]

How many bearings do these things have?

Wheel Breaings, Crown Wheel Bearings, Pinion Bearings

I though there was one huge "wheel bearing" behind the wheel in the FD and a couple of needle roller bearings somewhere as well.

£400 sounds a lot to replace a wheel bearing, if you want to argue this is not an FD failure and akin to a wheel bearing on a Jap bike it is not in the same league, most home mechanics can bang out a wheel bearing and replace it themselves for under £50 wihtout special tooling, or pay around £100 all in for the dealer to do the job.

The requirement to split the FD assembly, have specialist pullers (or the ability to make your own tools) make this a bloody expensive job, even if you do call it "just a wheel bearing". I would also be concerned about how well the job gets done, if they fail because the factory can't shim them properly how well is Mr "I don't give a stuff about your bike and just want my productivity bonus" who is working on it going to do?

Anyone got a link to a pretty picture / diagram to help me out with what is inside this mysterious box of expense.

 

[seahorse]

It is not just a wheel bearing. There are no wheel bearings as such, the crown wheel bearings in the FD in effect are also the wheel bearings. BMW managed to make reliable final drives for 70 odd years before coming up with the current version which is poorly designed and possibly also poorly assembled and with poor quality bearings. How many airheads and K series bikes do you hear of with FD problems? BMWs service limit of 1mm play at the rim is bollox, there should be none.

 

[Roymondo]

Anyone got a link to a pretty picture / diagram to help me out with what is inside this mysterious box of expense.

Www.realm.com has full parts diagrams for all models.

 

[Ugly Cow]

It has to be cost. Fitting an Angular contact ball bearing would solve the problem, these are designed to accommodate combined loads, i.e. simutaneously acting radial and axial loads. Everytime you accelerate this put's a small load on the outer bearing due to the action of the pinion on the crown wheel. This is not perfect but acceptable. Probably most bearing failure's starts with the cage rivets breaking. This is entirely due to imposed side load, to repeat myself very few are shimmed correctly and most BMW dealers will just slap in a new bearing and seal

 

[Roymondo]

Sorry that should have said www.realoem.com - I blame the stupid auto-correcting text input on my iPad

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Not so sure about it being cost since the taper bearing is about a quarter of the price of the groove bearing. Apart from that the allegedly uber reliable 1150 had the same arrangement of bearings. Taper on one side and groove on other. In fact I just checked the fiche oven on Max BMW and guess what so does the 1100. Over on the water cooled boxer thread someone said "great they are using the K FD and they are legendary" guess what? Same bearing arrangement, not only that but the bearings are the same part numbers as are many of the other parts. Sooo what makes every other FD better than the 1200 GS/A even although they are the same design and in some cases the same bearings/parts? The RT's have exactly the same FD barring a gearing change so what makes them so immune? Or is it just as I said earlier this is the most popular model ever made by BMW and there are hundreds of thousands out there.

You choose whatever theory you like I guess and there are about as many of them as there are FD failures

 

[Ugly Cow]

Not so sure about it being cost since the taper bearing is about a quarter of the price of the groove bearing. Apart from that the allegedly uber reliable 1150 had the same arrangement of bearings. Taper on one side and groove on other. In fact I just checked the fiche oven on Max BMW and guess what so does the 1100. Over on the water cooled boxer thread someone said "great they are using the K FD and they are legendary" guess what? Same bearing arrangement, not only that but the bearings are the same part numbers as are many of the other parts. Sooo what makes every other FD better than the 1200 GS/A even although they are the same design and in some cases the same bearings/parts? The RT's have exactly the same FD barring a gearing change so what makes them so immune? Or is it just as I said earlier this is the most popular model ever made by BMW and there are hundreds of thousands out there.

You choose whatever theory you like I guess and there are about as many of them as there are FD failures

 

[Ugly Cow]

Re-read my thread

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

I did?

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Ok I think I know what part you have umbridge with and its the bearing part. I haven't worked out the RPM's don't have time just now but an angular contact bearing has quite a low RPM threshold so that's possibly a problem. Again without checking they might be wider like for like as well which could be a problem. Cost, haven't a clue what they cost but it could be a solution after a re-design and the specs working out, I will give you that.
My other points stand though, why does this exact same setup and in some cases parts appear to work fine except on the back of a GS/A?
I should also add that looking at the parts fiche the groove bearing has been superseded but it doesn't say when and I don't have the info on what the new bearing is.

 

[Ugly Cow]

This is entirely due to imposed side load, to repeat myself very few are shimmed correctly and most BMW dealers will just slap in a new bearing and seal.


R1150GS has exactly the same problem, some go for 100,000 miles, some do 20,000 miles using the same bearing manufacturer, why? piss poor assembly. I read this so Iam not sure if its true or not. When the 1150 became a success BMW recruted east german labour who did not have the same expertise. The reason I mentioned the Axial bearing is that this would be more tolerant of poor shimming to a certain degree. Speed would not be an issue as wheel bearings rotate at a far lower speed than almost all ball/roller bearing are capable of.
Obviously the GS is BMW's most succsseful bike so more failures to this model will occur.
The bearing is ok, its the shimming which is the problem, a friend of mine had three bearing failures in 18,000 miles. after it was shimmed up properly no more problems.

 

[trainman]

i asked this before and never got a response,

1 is this issue any worse on non drain plug FD's that came with a sealed for life statement (change oil only after the first 600m), do we have data to support a yes or no?

2 and has BMW now said that sealed drives should have a 2 yearly change like the others always did (if so an admission of guilt?)

has anyone got mega miles on a sealed FD thats only had the 600m change?

 

[TeaPig]

i asked this before and never got a response,

1 is this issue any worse on non drain plug FD's that came with a sealed for life statement (change oil only after the first 600m), do we have data to support a yes or no?

2 and has BMW now said that sealed drives should have a 2 yearly change like the others always did (if so an admission of guilt?)

has anyone got mega miles on a sealed FD thats only had the 600m change?

You are unlikely to get a meaningful reply as the only people with any volume of data is the warranty dept. at BMW. Loads of people keep asking this question but there are many variables associated with both the use of the bike and it seems, the assembly tolerances.

As has been stated, the problem goes way back to the 1100's and although various tinkerings have taken place with the design to date, none have yet to be shown to have solved the problem. The oil change is a useful way of removing metal wearing from the internals and may extend FD life. I have twice got 80k from FDs that have had oil changes every 10k. One of these was the 'sealed for life' FD. The later factory adoption of a scheduled oil change supports this assumption.

It's important to reiterate that the pinion bearings fail too, not just the wheel bearings. I still maintain the rapid wear of the pinion needle bearing dumps
loads of metal particles into the system. The provision of a magnet in the drain plug of the recent bikes may alleviate some of the wear this could promote.



Also there is not a taper bearing in the FD, anywhere.

 

[Skid06]

the biggest issue i have with it is having to ride with play in the back wheel and that's on a good fd unit because bm says it's ok, i wouldn't accept it on a mountain bike, it just isnt right

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

Yes I know the older bikes had problems as well and all the other models but I am just trying to draw everyone's attention to it. Most of the 1200 owners complaining bitterly think this is just limited to 1200 GS/A and its not. In fact even some 1150 rose tinted owners think its a 1200 phenomenon.

To the last question the very early FD had a different pinion bearing and these seem to be a guaranteed fail. No data on when they fail but I would imagine they are all pretty much changed now to the larger bearing which is a straight replacement. I havent heard of a pinion bearing failing in ages but in theory it could and still does happen. Sealed for life is not any more and is part of the service schedule to change the oil every 2 years same as the rest.