Second brake failure

[FIN_GSer]

My R1200GS had ABS/integral brake failure last autum. (fast blinking ABS light, no action in brake pump) The bike went to winter storage at local dealer without brakes. They had whole winter time to play with it. Well, they replaced ABS unit and reprogrammed the bike. Everything was to be OK. However they did not find any root cause for the failure!!
This spring I got the bike...
Everything has been fine until today the brakes failed again!
This situation makes me think.. There is two things that DON'T fail in bikes I own:
1. frame
2. brakes

There is one common thing between these failures. The bike has been standing for about a week without riding and damp cool weather.
F***K This bike is supposed to survive deep rivers, cool weather at high altitude mountains and what else.

If they can not find the root cause and quarantee some relaibility very soon, this bike will be the last BMW I own!

FIN_GSer

 

[Gas'd Off]

F***K This bike is supposed to survive deep rivers

Nah, that`s the 1150 your thinking of

 

[ktmmark]

Just watched Bolivien DVD from touratech one on 1200 & one on 1150 @ the river crossing the 1200 made it 1150 did not

 

[Pukmeister]

We recently tried stripping/cleaning my mates 1150Adv front brakes, but by pushing in one newly cleaned piston too fast we slightly popped another out 'hydraulically' so we decided to bleed the entire system just in case air entered the caliper. Despite bleeding out loads of fluid from the affected caliper the system fault would not reset and the brakes got worse, not better and the pump was cavitating like mad. We tried again with a mityvac pump to no avail. Before you ask, we are both engineering technicians!!

It turns out the 1150 has a built-in fluid reservoir in the ABS pump as well as the one on the handlebars (which we nearly emptied when bleeding). The dealers ended up refilling and bleeding the system, which they claim is a nightmare to do, and only charged us an hours labour.

Moral of the story, be ultra careful when cleaning your brakes, and if any air enters the system, you are up sh*t creek. I expect the 1200 ABS system is similar to the 1150 unit. As there are loads of bleed nipples all over the ABS pump unit and system, you may be suffering from an ingress of air somewhere? Another possibilty is that a poor electrical contact somewhere on the bikes electrics is causing a spike which is trashing the ECU that controls the ABS function ( a bit like the Long Way Round frame welding fiasco).