EWS Immobilizer antenna threadfest

That's what I want to do. I truly didn't expect it to take this long. That is why I want to order an antenna. I am curious to see if it would arrive before theirs does. I expect that they will not just hand the part over to me, I am not a trained BMW tech. I also don't have their resources for information. I politely ask questions like I am stupid of the tech to try to steer him where I want him to go. He had not seen an EWS fault before and wasn't sure what it was for and was asking about my HID headlights as a culprit. I am just trying to be polite they have my bike and I would like it back this year. I'm tried of the harley guys at work giving me grief. You do not upset the people who prepare your food, I see this as the same situation. If I had known it would have taken this long I would have done it myself. Yes, I would have had to wait for the part but I could be doing other projects on the bike and it would be no one's fault other than mine and the UPS man's for not coming sooner if it took three weeks and counting. Live and learn if I have another situation like this I will try another dealer there are three all 100 miles from me. One I have heard good things about, I thought that there might be some assistance from this shop I have been a couple of times after the sale for service, parts, and accesories. No, I do not expect royal treatment because I purchased the bike from them just decent service in a timely manner. I do not think that is being unreasonable. Oh well eventually I will get my bike back.

I recently got my 10,000 km service done at Northern Colorado BMW. After the service, my wife and I proceeded to go off-roading, taking Cinnamon Pass over to Silverton. Bashing the under carriage on the way. When I lay down to check the dents in the skid plate, ther was NO skid plate!!!! So, after waiting two weeks to get the plate mailed to me in Canada, I see that there is a rubber mount missing as well. Now, I have to wait another week or so for the mount. After installing the plate, I get a bill from Fed-Ex for $42 in brokerage fees. I send Nothern Colorado BMW an email (to Mark the manager) about the bill and of course I don't get a reply. Today, I recieved a second notice from Fed - Ex for $42.

Last week, I hear squeeling from my back brakes ----pads are worn right out. Metal on metal......isn the brakes part of the 10,000 km check?? That was only 2,700 km ago (2,500 of which was all highway). Surely they would not have worn out that fast.

Bottom line is I would rather do the service myself, but the service work is all about the Warranty ......right??

If any of you happen to deal with Mark (very friendly BTW - but that doesnt cut it) over there at Northern Colorado BMW ..... let him know that I said hello and that his bill is still waiting for him at Fed Ex.

(Decided to start a thread on this one).

Ouch that hurt!

sound smore like this to me - "Too Bad it's mechanical its going to break anyway live with it"

(believe it or not some dealers really do have that attitude)

Anyhow Bobby you are right, anything mechanical can break this is true. but the silly issues are just enough to make one wonder where is this bike going to leave us stranded. Maybe BMW wil come up with some fixes, it sure leaves the dealers that do care in a tough spot, I feel for your serivce departments because I know they do try and do thier best.

Heck if it didnt take up so much room, I would carry a spare final drive and the tools to fix it, maybe a trailer behind the GS? HAHAHA


all kidding aside the issues do have many concerned, like myself and my wife as we crossed from mammoth cave to Zion National Park late at night, US 6 out of CA. through nevada to 375 to 93 have you ever traveled those roads? there is NOTHING out there! nor many other places out there

The concern for us mere customers is real

Tom Gallo

at least three times we have had bolts missing from the skid plates after having it serviced, so whenever I get the bike back home from serivce now, I pull the bolts put a dab of blue locktite on them - no worries any more. i think the rubber isolators let it vibrate just enough to loosen the bolt up and fall out.

Well, my bike was ready the next day. Supposedly there's a new antenna part #. My receipt was part #61357696463.

RB...

Ask them what exactly malfunctioned in the antenna [if they know], what caused it to malfunction and if they notified/sent it to BMW.

Love to hear the why along with the what...'old' medical thing: Mechanism of Injury, so you can treat problem and not symptom [windings are breaking due to overtightening VS "it won't start"]..

Let us know...thanks.

BMW pays the warranty claim, they'll know!! It's money out of their pocket. Fact of the matter is as it's been stated numerous times and while it's a concern, it's far less of a failure rate percentage then qualifies for any recall, emergency action or redesigning the whole system. It'd be great if nothing ever failed, but even hammers probably have a 1% failure rate in their lifetime.

I am supposed to get my bike finished today. They haven't called yet and I am not sure if the part came in yesterday or today. I'm going to wait until after 12 EST to call them, as they said they would call me.

I'm still utterly confused by this dynamic:

• The antenna ring failure affects some small % of owners.
• Those that it does affect experience a dead bike.
• We don't seem to have any granular information on exactly what happens when this failure occurs.
• Some people are actively resisting the idea of anybody here gaining more information ... to the point of (good-natured, I'm assuming) insults and ribbing.

I'm utterly confused.

To Bobby, and others who are in this mode: if YOU don't know, or if YOU don't care ... fine ... but what would those of you who are actually trying to dissuade others from getting more information (or implying/saying that they should stop worrying about it) possibly hope to accomplish by doing so?

I'd like to know why these things are failing, and if it's preventable up front.

Others, it seems, would like to know, too -- doubtless for slightly different reasons than mine.

What's served by diminishing and invalidating their concerns?

What's served in assuming that this is an obsession on their part, rather than an interest?

What's served in assuming that this is the ONLY potential failure point that they're considering?

If you were described as an impediment above, please enlighten me. I'd be grateful.

I'm sure BMW knows that there have been problems with the antenna, but they may not know what the cause of the antenna failures is. Do you guys routinely send failed parts back to BMW for inspection/analysis? I could see BMW chalking up a couple as bad luck and not looking into the issue, but there's probably a failure rate threshold where they investigate the cause and either redesign for future models or even do a recall (big $$$$). So then the questions would be what is the threshold and has the antenna issue reached the threshold?

Without going into all of the rhetoric about failure rates, etc. etc. I wonder if anyone knows the following answer?

Will this work, HAS ANYONE ACTUALLY TRIED or is it a colossal waste of time? I don't want to be the test case for this as with my luck/skill, my bike will be incapacitated!
1. I have a spare antenna ring
2. It appears as if (GS 12 Adv) the 'cover' to the wiring harness of the ring is nothing but 2-10 Torx screws, and with a 'finger' wrench they can easily be removed.
3. Once that cover is removed can the harness be access, unplugged from the ring and plugged into the new ring? Albeit, the new ring will be dangling near the forks, presumably.
4. Is the new ring in close enough proximity to start the bike or is this all an exercise in futility as doing this the key and the ring are too far apart for it to work?

Anyone know this or like many things like this, it's a crapshoot?

jpalamar:

I THINK Bobby answers those questions in this post:

http://advrider.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4892684&postcount=13

Please correct me if that's not what you were after....

Exactly what I was looking for, but, without being the 'Doubting Thomas' of the group, was it acutally tried and does it always (usually) work? If that be the case, 155 bucks, (discounted 120 bucks) not a bad workaroud, and one I could live with!

Read this thread to it's entirety and then you will have seen just about everything there is to see, there's no more info hiding mysteriously and to dig more is like beating a dead horse, even if you're new to the party. It's a preventable issue if you wish to spend the extra coin and have any roadside mechanical ability to make a temporary fix to get you home. BMW is not going to sign on to any forums and give some kind of public acknowledgement or reasoning, so you're left with a few dealers who are active in the forums and will put up with the hype and abuse from time to time on these issues and provide some input. Answers to all of your questions and insinuations are here in this thread thanks to the mods combining all of the various immobilizer threads, read the whole thing and then bash, OK????

As for is it preventable? Yes, never ever ride the bike. However if you choose to ride the bike and I hope you do, you have a less then 2% chance of this failing in my and other dealers experiences. There has been no link to a common denominator on the 2% that have failed, although it does appear that the failures are on newer bikes rather then the older 05 and 06's, perhaps there was a change in vendor, but its all guess work because until it becomes a much more prevalent issue, there will be no public service announcement from BMW. Of the 3 known failures here at our shop in the past 3 years and 400 units of CANBUS bikes, one of those failures happened to my buddy's bike while we were riding the cherahala, gave him my bike and spent the rest of the day waiting for a tow home, shit happens it's fixed and I'm not going to carry a spare antennae in my pocket to ward off the boogie monsters short of a high adventure long distance vacation type trip, then you bet your ass I'll have one.

Worry less
Ride more

I've read the whole thread. Maybe it will help if I take a shot at translating what you wrote: you don't know what's actually causing the failures.

Okay. Thanks, Bobby. I gotcha'.

Again, that helps a great deal. Thanks.

I'll try to translate that, too: again, you don't know what's actually causing the failures.

Gotcha. Thanks.

As for me? I'm still just going to ignore that and hope that somebody ELSE can derive more info on this subject. If they DO, and it's simply of NO interest to you, then please feel free to ignore it.

Thanks much..

Definitely works on a GS, RT, HP2, R12S, F800 havent tried any of the K bikes though.

Dude relax, it's a very very simple part with only a couple of potential causes other then manufacturing defect(which has been discussed here by Poolside and others) Vibration, heat, some think moisture but I say no, it's sealed others think there is RF interferance potential. No one has done a study other then BMW AG in their development process and they aren't going to be spreading the love on any of their findings if they have any short of it becoming and epidemic which it's far from reaching. This isn't some new witch craft, it's very simplistic in its design and construction. The technology has been used on cars for quite sometime and it's had failures there too.

Dude. I'm really quite relaxed, but -- again -- thank you.

I just don't see the point of chiming in with "I got nothin. Dun' worry so much about it."

I really don't.

Thank you very much. A reasonable workaround and 120-150 bucks cheap for peace of mind. BTW, getting to the part in question on the GT is I'm sure a DAY in the shop. It's really inaccessible as you already know.

Thanks!

Yes we do send parts back when requested by BMW, we hold onto all warranty parts for 3 months and then the warranty rep scraps what they do not send back for analysis. When the new FD's came out, they were almost all sent back for anaylisis, not sure how hard they are checking into the antennae failures as it has been a very small percentage of failure and just recently seems to be occurring with any regularity. I think folks do not understand the immobilizer and there is way more myth then fact on the issue, so folks experience a failure or hear it's a potential and scurry onto the net to research it only feeding the hysteria of it. Not sure what the threshold is, but BMW is very proactive in quietly doing quality control behind the big curtain.