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Another EWS issue and is the forum search function down?


swilson

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Already had the antenna ring replaced years ago on my 2005 R1200RT. Tonight the EWS came back. Had to 'key-on' about 40 times before I finally got it to recognize the key and got it home.

 

I had thought they antenna rings they were giving us were fixed!

 

I remember they had to drill out security screws to replace the first one. I'm hoping they didn't put back in security screws & changing the antenna ring will be an easy job this time around. Am I guessing correctly? 2nd time around will be as easy as unbolting & unplugging the old and swapping in the new... or is a dealer visit required?

 

I did some searches to try and see if others were having multiple failures, but the search function returned zero threads, no matter what I searched for. Is it just me or is the search function down?

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Morning Scott

 

If it were my bike I would buy a new antenna ring & carry it with me along with a spare key.

 

In an emergency EWS no-start you can just plug the new antenna ring in with spare key in it & start the bike (no need to bolt the ring on).

 

It's possible you were just in an area that had some major RFI interference that interfered with your antenna ring/bike electronics properly reading the key.

Basically wait to see if the problem happens again.

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Last week it happened also, but on that occasion I only had to key on once more before it worked. I'm going to run over this morning and buy another antenna ring.

 

Scott

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Bought a replacement antenna today. Plugged it in and used the '2nd key in the antenna' trick to try and get it to go. No luck. I've since fiddled with it enough that I've discovered the EWS only comes up with the handle bars to the left. If they're centered or to the right, no EWS issue. Most likely I have a broken wire in the harness.

 

I began taking the bike a part already. As soon as I cut the zip ties (which were all too tight) holding the harness to the frame the EWS issue now occurs with every key-on.

 

I have the BMW factory service DVD. I thought for sure I'd find the electrical schematic for the wiring harness there, but no luck. Did I overlook it, or is it really not there?

 

I'm headed out to the garage to attempt to trace the wires through the harness.

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Well with a bit of educated guessing and a bit of luck I found that the Antenna Ring wiring comes from the smaller of the two big connectors that plug into the Motronic computer. I rang out the wires and found that one that had no continuity.

 

Near the antenna ring I unwrapped the wiring harness and gave the problem wire a tug. To my surprise it pulled right out. As you can see in the attached photo it was broken all the way through, insulation included, right where the harness had been zip tied too tightly.

 

I made the repair by soldering the broken wire and heat shrinking the area. I made sure not to position my zip ties over the areas that had been previously zip tied and made sure not to over tighten them.

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As DR already said, good job finding and resolving the issue.

 

As to posting pictures, take a look here for more info on how to share your pictures on bmwst.

 

Glenn

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Don_Eilenberger

Great diagnostics! And you may want to go through your harness and replace all the BMW applied tie-wraps.. they like to tighten them too damn tight, causing exactly the failure you experienced. It isn't the first time I've heard of this exact failure, of this exact tie-wrap point. Tie-wraps are to keep the wires in position, not to weld them to the frame of the bike (or each other), snug is just fine with them.

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That is one really big issue that I have with BMW.

I do believe that their are a lot of complains on the forums, that I personally categorize under the label: Whinging

But BMW's use of cable ties is an absolute joke.

Every Japanese bike I have seen uses proper manufactured holders/connectors for their cabling. But BMW still uses got dam cheap arse plastic cable ties even on my most recent 2014 RT-LC.

We stopped using plastic cable ties on all Ethernet structured cabling. Any external cabling, using plastic cable ties are now used mainly in car installs as we change our work vehicles every 5~7 years at the latest.

Otherwise for external use like RF cables at radio Sites, stainless steel straps are the norm.

 

There are also large differences in plastic cable tie quality. The better ones use a small steel tung instead of the usual plastic one.

Unfortunate BMW uses the cheaper variety.

Here are the main issues with cable ties:

They tightened up over time (shrink) in a big way causing damage to cabling.

They will get brittle when exposed to large temperature changes or sun light and their shrinkage exponentially gets worse under these condition.

Which are the exact condition they are exposed to in our bikes.

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