You want a nice reliable BMW, you do

Well, *I* do.

The K stripped its gearbox input shaft splines last night; To add insult
to injury, that was on the way to my tame BMW mechanic to get it
serviced and, strangely enough, have the gearbox looked at. Arse.

OTOH, top marks to the four bikers who stopped to check that I was OK
while I was admiring the sights on the A2 just past the Dome (none
found) during the wait for Auntie Carole to send around the breakdown
lorry. And top marks to Brian for being completely unfazed by me turning
up in the middle of the night instead of the early evening as originally
agreed.

Unfortunately I've already got a lower bound on the cost for the repair
so you can probably guess that I'm a very happy bunny this morning. Not.

I can already hear Lozzo's pen scratching on the pages of his Black Book
of BMW.

 

Someone at work is selling a F650CS, it may be cheaper in the long
run ;-)

 

A "lower bound". What's that, then?

Go on, let me guess the cost. I'd say £1100.

So can I.

<Worried>

What are the early symptoms of gearbox demise on a K1100LT?

 

Look at the white warning circle.
If two of the segments have gone blue then it's going to break down.

 

Bwaahahahahaha!

*Excellent*.

 

700 quid for a day's labour? Blimey, I'm in the wrong business.

I could do a gearbox remove and replace in a weekend comfortably on a K.
However the ABS *really* fucks things up here.

 

Or simply getting the bike home and doing the gearbox himself with a
complete box from a breaker.

It's a feckin rare occurance, you could guess if it was going to happen
somewhere......

 

It's a tough call. My first thought was to contact Motorworks first,
to see if they've got a decent used gearbox, but as you say, the main
expense is the labour. That said, with a used 'box, the only labour
would be the swap, but it'll still be expensive.....

If it was mine, I'd write it off at this point. All the rest of the
bits are worth a lot of dosh - fairing, panniers, clocks, ABS, etc etc
etc. I'd just break it and start again.

 

.....it'd happen to Timo.

 

I *will* remeber that one.

Thank you.

 

Hmm. Possibly. I've replaced oil seals which needed the gearbox
opened.. and when I did this the forks fell out and then I had to fiddle
a lot.

Well, quite. So I don't think this would be a weekend's work; it would
be someone else's problem.

But even so 700 quid for labour sounds steep to me; even if it's two
day's work. Then again my prices are maybe based in the 80s.

 

[snip]

look, you're an IT contractor working for an investment bank in the
City - FFS, just throw all your old shite in a skip and buy something
modern and reliable[1]. If you work for who I think you work for, then
you should be getting paid a fair whack - just fucking spend the
money, you tight git.

[1] unlike one of my contractors, who has a 1-year-old KTM Superduke,
which is on it's third starter clutch and has been back to the dealers
4 times to investigate an intermittant electrical problem.

 

No not entirely and as you say rust won't help. BMW sell a rather special
spline grease. I use it in there and on driveshaft/final drive splines. It
isn't stupidly expensive.

Can't you do an "accelerated" workshop repair of your own? I'm sure help
can be had if required. A handy rafter for tying the bike up to helps.

K gearboxes are a doddle, not like the old boxer items with all that endplay
shimming heartache. I wonder how much the shaft is.

Don't you have a spare bike actually running? You are welcome to borrow one
of mine, suitably insured, for a week or two. Leeds collection though.

 

I often look at Cali's and think they look pretty good. Certainly the only
bike of that type I'd consider. The wrist angle on the 'bars might be all
wrong for Timo though. Plenty of them to be had around.

 

AOL - they're one of the few bikes in the "cruiser" class that I like
the look off - I especially like the look of the dechromed "Stone"
variant from a few years back.

http://www.armory.com/~marina/images/mattc1.jpg

 

it was acceptable at the time...

 

That's the bike, though it's had the standard bars changed. Want's to be the
twin disc variant though.

 

Bwaahaaa, you evil man!

 

Thing is that the K1100LT is *so* good at what it does and it's not a
question of being tight. A well sorted K1100 is going to be more
reliable than a modern BMW... er if you get past the odd critical
collapse.

I keep looking at the K1200GT and would be sorely tempted if I thought
that it would be reliable.

 

So keep looking around for a sub 20K miler. They come up occasionally.

But you *do* know better