Re: [ST] was damnitalltoheck, now how's the beemer

["Emile Nossin" <Emile@xxxxxxxxxx>]

>From: BrettWilson21@xxxxxxx
>Given the Germans and particularly, BMW's reputation for over engineering 
>their vehicles, a brake system failure is very surprising.

Not a surprise at all for me, you're overestimating German reliability
(the so called VW Bug myth) or underestimating German marketing :-).

The German powered brakes have been a huge source for immense discussions,
there've been a lot of failures and complaints in Germany of riders. It
even hit the newspapers at one point, even the German mag Motorrad (not
that biased to BMW) published a couple of pages full of text between an
German internet rebel protesting against this what he called dangerous
system and a BMW rep.

For me the lack of reliability is not that surprising, having read about
and experienced a lot of bad BMW engineering. BMW riders often have no
experience with other brands and think this is "character" or "normal",
they also think other brands can only be worse. But BMW had so many
problems with surging, pinging, powered brake failures, ABS faults
(the ABS itself is still one of the worst in the market), shaft leakings,
oil usage, V belts breaking, gearbox problems, exhaust weld failing etc etc..
The worst of it is that BMW never admits it, sometimes standard character
flaws transfer from one type to the new type (like ABS faults from the
1100 to the 1150). They come up with so called "innovative" ideas like
"twin spark" (which the PC800 already came with since '89) because of
the "environment" while everybody knows it's meant to reduce pinging and
surging (which it didn't).

The newer models have fewer faults (like with every brand), but than
(typically BMW in my experience so far) other failures like with the
powered brakes come up. It's too bad, because they have nice bikes.
Their engines suck though... a GS with Varadero or Tiger engine and
Honda ABS would have been great :-).

The R1150GS was the bike I've kept longest (2.5 years - 80.000 km ridden),
but I really don't want a boxer like that anymore. I was hoping the new
K models would be better, but the initial recall + the current brake
problems (which are on all other models as well I believe) + the fact
that they don't make decent bags anymore (always that exhaust eating up
half of the bag), makes me think that the BMW reliability / engineering
has not improved yet (on the engine part that is, the ergos and frame /
suspension stuff is pretty good). It's definitely not worth the extra
cash in my opinion (although they do get very good, undeserved though,
resale value).

Emile
www.piloot.com

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