New Owners - Stupid Questions Thread

Okay yes it did look grey, new tires just have to torque everything.
I will try the anti seize thing before torquing.

Not all greases mix. For instance if the grease on the axle is silicone grease and you use moly, the two will break each other down. For this reason I tend to clean the axle and hub before coating the axle with fresh grease.

The rear wheel of the K7X comes installed by the factory with E.P. Lithium NLGI #2 coating the axle.

The front axle comes dry as the front wheel is dealer installed. Most dealers coat it with whatever is handy so theres actually no telling what is on it unless your good at identifying grease.


The main purpose of greasing the axle is to prevent it from rusting internally and becoming very hard to remove without damaging the wheel bearings, but of course you also need a dab on your hub seals and whatever you use on the axle is going to get on the seals.

For this reason silicone is a poor choice as it will cause the seals to swell and anti seize is also a poor choice as it is not made to lubricate anything that moves regularly and contains either copper or aluminum oxide particles that will eat at the seals like sand paper making them loose water proofness fast.


Many dealers use anti-seize on the axle and if they are moderately competent, warn you down the road that your hub seals seem to be due for replacement. If the dealer is totally incompetent they won't notice your hub seals have failed and just wait for a bearing to go. If a dealer is highly competent, they will use E.P. Lithium like the factory does.

P.S. upper end E.P. lithium grease is often called "moly" grease as it is a petroleum base grease with a lithium-12-hydroxystearate thickener and molybdenum disulfide added as a high pressure additive that keeps the seal lip from pushing it out of the way and running dry.

Whatever grease you use, it should also have corrosion inhibitors added as well as water resistant additives.


INFACT, all the preceding paragraphs could be ignored if you just use boat axle grease and clean off whatever was on the axle before

I gotta tell ya Joel, your participation in this forum is hugely appreciated. Your depth of knowledge on these technical matters is dramaticly more than is available from my dealership and others I've been in. We are indeed fortunate to have your help.

As is normal when I read your posts, I learned a bunch of things today. All greases are not the same, don't use anti-seize on the axle. Who knew?

Thank you!

What RexBuck said X 100!

Thanks guys

has anyone had to adjust the rubber anti vibe insert in the upper triple clamp? I discovered that when I dropped my bike, the bar clamp touched and marked it. The bars looked and were a bit off, they are better now. The Haynes manual has no mention of the inserts or if they can be removed without damaging them.

Just saw the part diagram on max bmw...do they just pop out?

Thanks in advance!

After many more miles, a situation has developed worthy of another Stupid Question......or maybe not so stupid.

Lately my ABS light has been coming on by itself (i.e. disengaging itself). This after rolling up to speed of 50 mph or more. The sensors are in position & look normal....nothing loose or broken. It resets when I cycle the key off and back on. ABS appears to work correctly while riding at slow speeds. But once its deactivated (red light is on), it does not turn itself back off while continuing to operate.

Now then, here's the really stupid (weird) part: When the this light comes on, my automatic turn signal cancellation device seems to deactivate. :huh I've tested this thoroughly and am absolutely certain of the correlation between the two events.


Someone please tell me what might be causing this ABS problem, and how the ABS system and blinker cancellation system are related.

Kind thanks,

HF

So I have had my rear ABS sensor broken for ... quite some time... I kinda like it broken, as when it wasnt broken, I would get lazy, and leave it on. I know leaving it off has made me quite a better rider off road. (Granted i have had zero off road experience before this bike.)

Ok, So my blinker canceling doesn't work either. The blinker works somthing like this: Turns off after riding 200 ft or 20 seconds, whichever comes last.

When I had my bike in for the 12k, the tech told me the cancel would not work if the sensor was broken. It has something to do with being able to accurately measure wheel speed, which is strange, because my speedo is still dead on.

However, my ODO is off a little.

My rear wheel sensor is broken, it is getting all of its data off of the front wheel sensor.

Observations...
1. My odo is off enough, that if it was counting wheel turns, it would be accurate if it was measuring the rear tire.
2. My speedo reads the same, so it seems the computer knows better and is compensating for the speed, but not the ODO.
3. The non ABS bike only have the rear wheel sensor. So this is the one that apparently the computer works best with, but it can also use the front for the tasks, just perhaps not with the same calibration, and for sure the cancellation does not work with only the front sensor.

So, Im not sure if an ABS bikes turn signal cancel will work with the rear wheel sensor only, bu it might.


I think your problem is an ABS sensor issue, just taking into account my abs sensor issues. And I would start with looking closer at the rear. (IF in fact it is the rear sensor that is needed for turn signal cancellation.)


So, not sure if that helped, but there ya go!!!

Ryan

Do you guys typically 'pound out' a big dent in your skid plates? I went through some deep sand Sunday and, buried within, was a big ass rock that threw me and the bike quite some distance. The dent is baseball-sized; close to, but not touching, the headers. Thanks.

Hhhhhmmmmmm.......interesting. Thanks for the info, Ground Zero.

CaliKari.....yes, pound it out. But take it off the bike first. Just sayin

HF

Thanks HighFive! Will be bending and pounding and repainting the GS tomorrow. 20,150 miles in 1 year! Roughly 2300 in the dirt; that's over 11%. Not bad.

This seems like such a simple thing, but how do I take off the front brake reservoir cap off? Unlike most bikes, it neither twists off, nor are there small bolts to remove. I don't want to muck it up by putting a lot of pressure on it. I tried squeezing the two small tabs on just below the cap but that seemed to do nothing.

Take a piece of dental floss or very fine wire and wrap it around the two small tabs on the cap and pull it tight to depress them. Should come right off when you turn the cap.

You have to squeeze the tabs and twist at the same time. One trick (found somewhere in the forums) is to get a small piece of coat hanger and put a small bend in each end to press the tabs and twist the cap off.

Silly owner ... you are supposed to go to the dealer and buy a special wrench ...
thus contributing to the Euro-zone bailout

Here's some pictures of the wrench and a home-made option:

http://f800riders.org/forum/showthread.php/40630-F650-800GS-Brake-Reservoir-Cap-Removal-Tool

Thanks for the help everyone. Nice simple solutions. Now, I wonder, would BMW design it that way just so they could sell each of us a special made tool? I'm just cynical I guess

Here's a stupid question for you: why did my 800GS start right up, first crank, after sitting unattended for 2 months, while my KLR was dead after sitting for just over a month? Both have the same battery. Hmm...

And I'm riding my 800GS plenty: now 21,000 miles in a year and 4 days.

Unless both batteries have been treated exactly the same since they left the same production line, they will have differences in discharge rate, particularly in different bikes. How batteries are treated, i.e. loads, cycling, etc., radically affects their service life. At least that's my understanding.

I have trickle charger pigtails installed on all my bike's batteries so that if the battery dies you can easily charge it or ideally leave it plugged in over periods of non-use.

It's especially useful for the F800GS which has a not-easy to access battery.

Or you could get a "smart" charger like my CTEK, then you can just use the stock DIN (Powerlet) 12V outlet.