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I bought the bike new on the 24th of December 2002.<\/p>\n
We left Cape Agulhas (Southernmost Point in Africa) in June 2004 with 39 000km on the clock, it was 18 months old then. We arrived in Dubai in Feb 2005 with 67 000km on the clock and left three years later (June 2008) with 92,000km on. Before we left home (Cape Town) a few items went wrong and were repaired under warranty free of charge. This includes:<\/p>\n
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- Replacement of diff bearings<\/li>\n
- Swingarm bearings<\/li>\n
- Front brake callipers<\/li>\n
- Faulty crash bars<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
On our journey, there have been a few fatal breakdowns. In Kenya the main wiring harness short-circuited and fused the entire harness, leaving us stranded in the Northern Desert of Kenya. It got replaced with a new harness by BMW in Nairobi. (see details in the Kenya section of the Website) The second big disappointment was the failure of the Servo Assisted and ABS brake pump resulting in no brakes on the rear wheel. BMW does not repair these pumps, and I was told to replace them with a new one, which would have cost over R20\u00a0000 ($3\u00a0000). Instead, I removed the pump and linked the brakes direct. The braking ability of the bike is just as good as with the Servo pump. (See details of this\u00a0modification later)<\/p>\n
Then the biggest disappointment so far is the fact that we had to replace the rear wheel bearing 5 times. It was done by a BMW dealer twice, and three times by myself. It is caused by the fact that we \u2018overload\u2019 the bike a bit. This is known to be a common problem with the 1150GS as well as the 1200LT (In the USA). I\u2019ve made a bold step to experiment with a different type of bearing, and have done away with the original Deep Groove Ball bearing. BMW supplies its customers with a FAG \u2013 6917 bearing which has 19 balls in the bearing. I\u2019ve even tried to use an NSK \u2013 6917 which has 17 balls in the bearing because some BMW dealers here in the USA are changing over to the \u201917 ball\u2019 bearing as a so-called improvement to the original FAG. Unfortunately, I did not get to use the bearing to the end of its life, as the small taper roller bearing failed on me while I had the NSK bearing in. The taper roller failed due to too much play on the hub, as I did not have any shims to my availability when I replaced the bearing in northern Canada (Closets BMW dealer was 1200km away) and decide to drive the bike as is down to Arkansas. In Arkansas I decided to do the big modification and inserted a \u00a0Precision Angular Contact Bearing in, as well as I have replaced the small taper roller. An Angular Contact Bearing does the same job as a Taper Roller Bearing, and it makes more sense to me to have two taper roller bearings facing each other, or in this case a tapered roller and angular contact. The original BMW design only has a taper roller bearing as well as a crown and pinion gear combination facing and forcing thrust load onto the inner ring of the standard deep groove ball bearing, which is not designed to handle any thrust load. The Angular Contact Bearing however is designed to take thrust load. This modification is being done by my own design and against the approval of BMW, but I have enough experience with machinery to think out of the box and come up with a solution to many GS and LT owners\u2019 headaches. As soon as I\u2019m satisfied with this modification, I will add the details and photos to the web, let me first take the GS for the ultimate test ride. . . . ………..So the bike had a few breakdowns on the way, some big and some small. Despite that, I still love my GS and would not choose another bike for the kind of trip we are doing…………………………….<\/p>\n
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