When did you last get your shaft out?

[Deleted account 250319001]

Yes, Summarised in the first paragraph....

While not part of the BMW Service Schedule, it is a good idea to do this at the 6 or 12 K service. This is especially true if you do a lot of deep water crossings, ride in the rain often, or just put on a lot of miles. There have been cases of corrosion in the FD on several bikes, though not a large number by percentage, and even a failure of the FD splines on one bike due to corrosion. So, with that in mind, I decided to check a 14K mile and 6K mile GSw today.

 

[MrMcNamara]

Been doing a bit of Googling and it seems as though cleaning and greasing splines can be a good thing if done regularly - if not debris held in the grease can actually do a lot of damage - so maybe the BMW metallurgists have determined that for the materials they use it’s best not to grease them??

I will leave my shaft well alone for now - I am on my 5th 1200GS and have put lots of all year round miles on all of them, never had splines fail yet

Been Googling? lots of so called expert on there then!
I prefer to rely on nigh on 40 years of Mechanical process & project engineering best practice. I am not aware of any Cardon shaft / splined shaft that's not lubricated at the point of manufacture period. in industry. We need these items to be reliable & nigh on all have grease nipples fitted, dirty environments or not. Bmw shafts that I have seen if not lubricated, all show signs of spline wear. you are however correct to point out best practice is to fully clean down old grease before re-lubricated. my own experience with many BMW splined shafts is that they attract very little if any contamination when checked / re-lubricated. Its by no means essential but certainly good practice to check / lubricate yearly

 

[beaver]

Been Googling? lots of so called expert on there then!
I prefer to rely on nigh on 40 years of Mechanical process & project engineering best practice. I am not aware of any Cardon shaft / splined shaft that's not lubricated at the point of manufacture period. in industry. We need these items to be reliable & nigh on all have grease nipples fitted, dirty environments or not. Bmw shafts that I have seen if not lubricated, all show signs of spline wear. you are however correct to point out best practice is to fully clean down old grease before re-lubricated. my own experience with many BMW splined shafts is that they attract very little if any contamination when checked / re-lubricated. Its by no means essential but certainly good practice to check / lubricate yearly

+1 to that

 

[MrMcNamara]

Could someone please advise of a specific grease to use on the splines?

Staburag was the original BMW reccomended grease, then a molybendum based anti fling grease, someone will be along shortly with the current grade. I use Staburag purely because I have a giant tub & its good grease for this application, I would suggest that most Molybendum based greases designed for spline protection would suffice

 

[beaver]

As per the earlier post ''Get some more grease (I used Honda M77)''

Its a very high content Moly

 

[Engineer]

Bit of info from Jim on the US site... regarded as a top guy on there and knows what he's on about... quite interesting

https://advrider.com/index.php?thre...ive-change-and-spline-lube-pictorial.1129815/

He does post some useful stuff but I reckon he’s a tad OCD

 

[beaver]

tell you what... it actualy makes it smoother as well... I didn't notice any play before... but I have noticed it being better after greasing for sure??..

 

[Wierpig]

He's right you know.. Pushing my 15 plate 11000 miler into the garage today and felt a bit rough. Put it on the centre stand an turned the rear wheel.A horrible graunching sound came from the shaft area.Thought I'd suffered the dreaded uj failure.Whipped the shaft out and the ujs were fine.some rust in there but the splines were as dry as a bishops bone.Cleaned it all up, applied some moly grease and re assembled. What a difference!!! Graunching gone, gearshift much better and a slight vibration on the over run gone.Different bike....do it.

 

[beaver]

it does indeed... I didn't have any issues with mine... but its been loads better after

 

[Deleted account 191119001]

it does indeed... I didn't have any issues with mine... but its been loads better after

Always some good tips from beaver..........

 

[CPJS]

My '17 bike, at 3,000 mls, developed a 'thrumming' in 4th gear between 2500 and 3500rpm. The dealer greased the shaft splines. This did smooth the out the general vibes a bit but did not sort out the 'thrumming' which is a separate issue.
My bike is going in for it's 16,000 service soon and I have asked for them to grease the splines at the same time, they said no problem.