spline maintence??

[BKC1]

anyone know at what mileage you should check spline for proper lubrication,i heard this could be a costly problem and there is no mention in manual

[Paul Mihalka]

There is no "you should" number and no official request or recommendation for spline service. The most common number mentioned is around 40K miles, and I would agree with that.

[SWB]

"Officially", BMW indicates that the (Oilhead) splines are a non-maintenance item, and should be lubricated only during regular maintenance (e.g. during clutch replacement, or other transmission & final driver related R&R).

 

Unofficially, lube them at 40K.. fine, or 20K if you feel nervous, or more or less often depending on whether your bike just went "clank-clunk" or "clunk-clank" the last time you shifted it. The REASON for lubricating the drive splines is that some have supposed that a lack of lubrication is the reason for expensive spline failures on a small minority of the bikes. Lubrication helps most everything (except on friction items like the clutch and brakes), but there's no clear association between those who lub their splines and those who let 'em rust, and those who actually have spline failure.

 

I've got "spline lub" on my own list of pending preventative maintenance between now and my 60K miles service. However, I'm only doing so because I'm also going to be R&R the clutch, and fuel regulator, and both tasks require the same disassembly as the infamous "spline lube". Plus, my bike was a hard-ridden police bike, and at 60K miles, I'd like the "warm and fuzzies" that only a spline lube (plus clutch and throttle cable replacement, and a bunch of other stuff) can give me.

 

If I had a newer civilian bike with say, 20K or 30K miles, there's no way I'd do a spline lube on it. BMW doesn't require it, the spline problem is probably related to a manufacturers defect in the transmission or engine housing alignment. As far as I'm concerned, i.e. either you've got a lemon (i.e. the alignment problem) and your bike will fail, or you don't. I think I think that tearing half your bike apart to lube splines "just in case" is an extreme waste of time (or money, if you have a pro do it).

 

My $.02 cents ...

[Paul Mihalka]

Additional $.02 from me: On my '99 R1100RT I followed the non- instructions and did not service the clutch splines. They failed at about 100K miles. That is too high mileage to consider a manufacturing defect. I would think that a spline lube some time in between would have prevented the failure and corresponding problem of being stranded somewhere. We replaced the clutch and the gearbox input shaft. About 40K miles later I had the splines lubed again and there was no excessive wear.

OTOH, On my current bike, a '02 R1150R, the splines failed at 30K miles in Middle Of Nowhere, Arkansas. That to me is a manufacturing defect. We replaced the whole gearbox and the clutch. I hope that cured it, but it will get serviced after about 40K miles. It now has 15K on the new gearbox and I never had a better shifting gearbox on a BMW before.

[smiller]

I think Paul's advice is sensible. While I wouldn't necessarily tear into a bike with 25k miles on it in a spline panic I would definitely agree that it should be done by 50k miles or so. Given that it takes most riders several years to put 50k miles on a motorcycle it makes sense to spend just one weekend in all that time to lube the splines and check out everything else while you have the bike apart (lubing the splines also let you check out the clutch, engine and transmission seals, driveshaft, swingarm bearings, etc.) Such practices (on any motor vehicle) greatly lessen the chance of breakdowns at inopportune times.