2011 bmw g 650 gs fork failure

I was totally shaken when I first saw this post and I really lost confidence in my bike. I love my bike otherwise... BUT that was at first and now with over 1000 kilometres I'm regaining confidence again but would be lying if I said I didn't do regular front fork inspections now... Which i suppose is a good thing to do anyways.

With that said, IMHO after re-reading the entire thread and more thought to what others have posted questioning the "break" without bashing the manufacturer and jumping to conclusions before an analyses... this is what comes to mind rebuilding my confidence:

The axel is definitely bent... a defective part that could have lead to the break....

Also note only the right fork is failed... I have yet to see any pics of the left side. Which could mean the left side took a lot of stress after the right side break and still hung on, fully attached.

The other thing that made me think since the first picture on page one of this thread, (and I am surprised no one has mentioned yet)... if the axel were to bend as a result to fork malfunction, it would have bent on the opposite side that is still attached, physics and logic prove that it would need to be bent at the affixed point... the the end that is floating. This leads me to "wonder" it may have been bent previously and then caused the fork to break.

The other thing is that we saw a lot of posting about this a year ago when it happened and there hasn't been a follow up from the original poster... not even a simple response from the dealership, never mind a conclusion from BMW itself.

"two sides to the coin" ?

What I've been saying for some time now ............. FAKE! Someone with an ax to grind with BMW got their hands on a photo of a bike that was run over in a parking lot by a dump truck and has been stringing everyone along.

Settlement came with an NDA would be my guess.

And as for the axle being bent, well, given the forces involved, hardly a surprise.

Pete

Strange that she was posting up until Jan 2012 then has not posted (or even logged on) since that time up to the present. Would be nice to hear the results . . . new bike, etc ?

Check into it and you see that "she" never ever posted anywhere else on ADV except for this post.......... ever.

You know that a single lower fork tube spins freely right? Once either tube breaks, yer hosed.

Some time ago Antiquewidow did check in and let us know what happened. It's in this thread somewhere. Of course the dealer or BMW isn't going to say anything. BMW didn't respond to the problem 10 years ago, why would they say anyting now? Bimmers ain't magic, they're built to a price point, just like a lowly KLR.

Well, except that KLRs don't break fork tubes.

AntiqueWidow is real, the failure was real, an NHTSA report was lodged and thankfully there have been no others recorded

Contrary to claims AntiqueWidow did not post elsewhere I would suggest you look at the google search results

http://www.google.com.au/#hl=en&sa=...pw.r_qf.&fp=fca5a035155b91ef&biw=1255&bih=810

She posted into a number of F/G650 related forums to warn others, basically as many as she could find

As ER70S-2 indicated a few posts ago she let us know what the state of play was and she has put it all behind her and moved on in life with a new machine

The bottom line is the machine was written off by the Insurance Co, there was no settlement or contact with BMW

You are missing the history here. These bossed forks have been failing for many years on BMW F series bikes. There was a rash of these failures back when the old F was a 650 single. I've seen threads here and elsewhere about this. The descriptions from various riders convinced me that BMW's claim that the damage occurred post crash wasn't truthful.

I thought the new F twin with similar forks had, in its redesign, addressed this issue, however this thread causes me to wonder if that's true.

So we have a history of F series bikes having bossed forks failing in a manner which caused terrible injury (maybe deaths but we don't know) for years. We have a history of BMW denying that the forks were defective in design or manufacture - a claim I don't believe.

And now we have a wholly different F bike with a different but still bossed fork failing.

Personally, I'd never have one of these bikes. I do not trust BMW to make this style fork properly or to address it when they fail.

I've always thought the 650 would be a great bike for my style of mostly road and a little dirt riding. However, I can't get the picture of that broken fork out of my head. If Antiquewidow's posts were meant to defame BMW, it definitely worked. However, I have a strong feeling that this is another example of a company making an engineering/manufacturing mistake and then ignoring it rather than fess up and take the consequences. This tells me they are more interested in avoiding lawsuits or settlements than in protecting the riders on their bikes. It doesn't matter that there are thousands and thousands of BMW 650's with tons of miles and no breakage, I just couldn't trust the bike after seeing these examples of fork failure.

I asked BMW about it and this is what I got as a response.

"Thank you for contacting BMW Canada. We appreciate your inquiry.

For technical information regarding your 2011 BMW G650 GS, we recommend speaking with the Service team at your local BMW retailer. They are in the best position to assist you, as they are technically trained. We hope you find this information helpful."

Pretty generic.

The 'service team' will deny any failures and then tell you to ignore the b.s. you find on the Internet.

Noooooooooooooooooo! This thread was nice and quiet for a while.

It's amazing how some people will let one questionable example put them off the bike while ignoring the multitudes of people posting pics of big jumps, routine off-road abuse and crashes, and already relatively high mileage (~11,000 mi here) with perfect reliability. It defies logic to give more weight to one than the other!

Somebody had an axe to grind...

http://www.google.com/search?q=http...&safe=off&prmd=imvns&filter=0&biw=533&bih=320

http://i1111.photobucket.com/albums/h479/antiquewidow

Only 2 viewable pics in that bucket unless directly linked. And searches don't turn up anything but those pics for that account.

There is a history of these forks failing well before the OP here. Enjoy your ride.

...with a different fork design, years ago, with zero known failures in between. But we're beating a dead horse for sure.

I've flown on airplanes other examples of which suffered failures and crashed, killing all aboard, yet I continue to go visit grandma. Am I stupid or crazy?

Oh, really, no failures in between and a different design? Have you compared the two designs? Perhaps the reason for failure in the old design wasn't addressed with the new one. Were there no failures or was it that BMW's legal team just got better and contacted the injured party before he could publish here?

I mean what was the cause of the old design failures? Do you know? Did you get the memo of BMW that they'd found the reason and addressed it?

In fact, did you get the memo from BMW saying that there had been a re-design? I missed that.

If Douglas had planes where wings fell off for all to see and then Douglas denied any fault that the wings fell off and then brought out a new plane which had wings designed apparently just like the ones which fell off - no, I'd not fly Douglas craft.

If, if, if....perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...maybe, maybe, maybe. You can always come up with unanswerable questions. A conspiracy theory can be fit to any situation and tailored such that there will always be doubt. Choose to live this way if that suits you...me, I'll be out riding.





And Douglas? You're dating yourself there!

It's your ride. I'd never own one of these but I don't have a dog in it of you wish to.

With only one known failure of the new/latest design, and given the bent axle and paint/ink mark, I wouldn't worry about it. I think it's a fluke failure.

Not the case for the earlier forks-IMO, of course.