I can see why. Any idea what the nature of the "major issue" was? Final drive by any chance?
Not at all... some bearing in the transmission... it would have been a simple cheap fix but he kept riding it another 300 miles and it was shot by then but he knew the warranty would cover it.
The term "offroad" covers a lot of territory. My previous experience was dirt biking (mostly single track trail riding) and I can imagine some situations where a 1200cc bike weigh 500+ pounds would have been a disaster. OTOH, riding such a bike on a fire road in reasonable condition doesn't seem like much of a stretch. So, I am not looking for a "dirt bike" per se...rather a bike that is at home on dirt/gravel roads as well as cruising at 70MPH on a paved two lane or interstate. At least I THINK thats what I'm looking for. Actually, my friend has become a frequent riding partner (also retired) and is buying a new GS...which frees up his '06 GS for me. So, I'd have a regular riding companion with a similar mount.
That would mean out of 100 bikes, there should be 5 failures...your friend had 4 on ONE bike...kind of throws those statistics out the window. I know of several people with BMWs who don't put on nearly that many miles, and each have had multiple replacements. Not trying to turn this into BMW bashing...our STs have had their own issues...just pointing out that it might have been BMW who came up with that so-called 5% failure rate to downplay a known issue.
This is not BMW bashing, we are just talking about personal knowledge of bikes with a problem in this system. I think I first read the 5% figure in BMW Owner's News, the monthly publication of BMWMOA but it has appeared in other publications like MCN that did their own reporting. BMW has never admitted there is a problem but NHTSA recently opened an investigation into similar failures on certain models of K bikes. Unofficial statistics come from events like the Iron Butt Rally where FD failures in recent years are documented.
