Pre-emptive maintenance

[DrMikey]

During the pre-spring downtime I'm thinking about maintenance beyond the usual services and inspections for my 2003 R1150RT. I has 45K miles at this point. First, is it worth rebuilding or at least thoroughly cleaning the fuel injectors? I hear differing opinions. I've noticed a bit of a surge around town, even when they're freshly sync'd. It pretty consistenly gets 41-44mpg.

 

Second, I know of several people with the old 5-speed transmissions whose gearboxes failed at around 65K. I don't have the same data for the six speed trannys. Does anyone have a take on doing a pre-emptive replacement of bearings and shims? There are a couple shops that do, and I'm wondering if it's worth doing a teardown now, shipping the box out and hopefully getting it back in a reasonable time frame. Similar concerns about the final drive come to mind. As you know, it's a major job- I figure 10 hours for the teardown and probably twice that much for the reassembly.

 

I hope to do a couple long trips this year. The RA National is in Colorado, and there's a group who will take the long way there via Montana. There's also a few LD Rallies later in the year that are appealing.

 

Opinions? Facts? Admonishments? Poison pen letters?

 

Mike in Viroqua

 

[Selden]

At 45,000 miles, the clutch should still have many miles left, but spline wear was a problem with some 1150s, and if you have never lubricated the input shaft splines, this is a good time to do so. Pull the left fairing panel, left footplate, and starter. Removing the starter reveals a small space where you can see a portion of the input shaft splines. Having just replaced a clutch, I can assure you this approach is a lot less work than splitting the bike.

 

 

While you have the starter off, disassemble and clean it; dirty work, but not terribly difficult.

 

 

If the transmission shifts easily, and transmission/FD oil changes have not shown anything alarming to date, I wouldn't worry about them at 45,000 miles. If in doubt, change the oil, even if it's not yet time; oil is cheap, and neither task requires a lot of time.

 

The FD pivot bearings are likely to have developed some free play; grab the rear wheel at 9 and 3 and see if it has any play lateral movement. If it does, your options (from cheap to expensive) are 1) tighten the inside preload adjuster; 2) replace with new OEM needle bearings; 3) replace with Rubber Chicken bronze bushings. Pivot bearing replacement should take less than 4 hours.

 

Have you ever replaced the throttle cables? BMW recommends doing so at intervals, but it's somewhat of a PITA, due to the location of the cable splitter (Bowden) box (I assume this hasn't changed significantly with the 1150 models). Since I had my R1100RT apart for the clutch work, I replaced the cables (which looked fine since the previous change 50,000 miles previously) and cleaned the Bowden box.

 

Here's a well-illustrated post that covers many of the things you might want to consider doing: How I spent my Holiday weekend....lotsa pics

 

I don't want to start a shocks thread, but if you are still on the original OEM shocks, you might want to do something about them.

[PAS]

Selden, Can you tell me which allen head and Torx head bits are needed to get to the clutch on an RT? Planning on a spring project myself.

[Selden]

Selden, Can you tell me which allen head and Torx head bits are needed to get to the clutch on an RT? Planning on a spring project myself.

If my memory serves, I used all the sizes in the OEM toolkit: 3mm, 4mm, 5mm, 6mm, 8mm. But L-shaped hex wrenches are useless with a torque wrench, so in order to torque fasteners properly, you will need hex bits that fit a 3/8" socket drive: 5mm, 6mm, 8mm. The fastener for the rear ABS sensor requires a T25, and is the only one I remember that required a Torx bit, but I could be forgetting something.

 

BMW recommends raising the tail; Haynes suggests removing the subframe entirely. I did the latter, which requires more work, but while it was off, provided the opportunity to clean and repaint the subframe and rewrap much of the wiring harness.