2011 bmw g 650 gs fork failure

[reenmachine]

I've been away from this thread for a few months...is there anything new? I assume AW hasn't resurfaced. Have there been any other failures on a 2011-12 G650GS?

Over 10,000 miles on mine now. So far it's still a 2-wheeler.

[zig06]

Just wondering but why didn't BMW just use the X-Country's forks when they came out with the Sertao?

Their stronger, more modern in design and function (adj damp and rebound ... right?) and better all around (stiffer and better self protected), and they actually look like they belong on a $9,000 plus bike. Not to mention that this would also be a start to putting all of that fork litagation issues behind them...

And for what it's worth, has anyone ever tried to install a set of these on a G 650 GS ??

[henrymartin]

I asked a dealer about swapping the forks to 650Xchallenge forks. Never been done, is what I was told. It would be pretty expensive, too.

[KansasBob]

Originally Posted by reenmachine

I've been away from this thread for a few months...is there anything new? I assume AW hasn't resurfaced. Have there been any other failures on a 2011-12 G650GS?

Over 10,000 miles on mine now. So far it's still a 2-wheeler.

Very Good Question.......................

It's the internet for Gods Sake!

I have felt the original photos were faked, or of a set of forks that were subjected to some weird fell off the fork truck accident since I saw them.

By the way, I'm a 16 year old Asian girl currently preforming in the Olympics.



Any questions?

[reenmachine]

Why keep this thread open in the absence of any new information? I just read back a bunch and lost several IQ points for having done so. The level of paranoia and non-critical thinking of many posters is staggering -- I'm sure they'd be posting more if they weren't busy posting on other forums demanding to see Obama's birth certificate and taking turns on watch for black helicopters. There are more logical fallacies flying around here than at a psychic homeopath UFO convention.

Mind you, I'm not saying that this isn't a credible failure due to a manufacturing defect, nor am I saying it is. There just isn't any useful evidence of anything, so by extension everything said here is just speculation. What you've got to understand is that even if we had AW's forks in hand and a world-class forensic metallurgy lab at our disposal, all we'd be able to show (still with some uncertainty) is how that one particular failure occurred. There's a very good chance that all we'd be able to learn is the nature of the failure type without gaining any insight into the root cause. Even if we did somehow learn every cradle-to-grave detail about this failure, we'd have a statistically meaningless sample size of ONE.

I hate to break it to you guys, but you're never going to know what happened here. Time to move on with your lives. If you've drawn the conclusion that you'll never ride a BMW because of this, fine. I have no problem with that, nor should anyone else.

And before you say it, no, I do not have a bias due to the fact that I have a 2011 G650GS. Believe me, if I felt that I needed to be concerned about my fork (or anything else) I'd quit that thing like a bad habit, and I humbly feel that I am more than qualified to make that determination on a solid engineering basis.

[atomicalex]

Actually, I'm here now. And I do exactly what you asked about - industrial metal accident reconstruction. When metal parts fail in manufacture, I get called in to figure out why. I'm not a metallurgist, I'm a metal forming expert.

As long as this thread stays live and people have a place to post the failures, people who do what I do can look across all of the metallurgy and back into the actual forming process, and even back further into the design sequence to figure out what went wrong. One set of forks does only tell us about one failure, but seven sets of forks tell me a ton about what is going on in the process and where and when errors can propagate.

This thread is relevant until a credible explanation is given that is not refutable by BMW or the caster of the parts.

[reenmachine]

Originally Posted by atomicalex

Actually, I'm here now. And I do exactly what you asked about - industrial metal accident reconstruction. When metal parts fail in manufacture, I get called in to figure out why. I'm not a metallurgist, I'm a metal forming expert.

As long as this thread stays live and people have a place to post the failures, people who do what I do can look across all of the metallurgy and back into the actual forming process, and even back further into the design sequence to figure out what went wrong. One set of forks does only tell us about one failure, but seven sets of forks tell me a ton about what is going on in the process and where and when errors can propagate.

This thread is relevant until a credible explanation is given that is not refutable by BMW or the caster of the parts.

Sure. The thread is here and if anybody has a failure they can post it up. Until then, there's not really any reason to post. Even then, without having the parts in hand in a lab environment there's not much one can do, regardless of education or background, but speculate.

Without inside access to BMW, there's no way you can "look across all of the metallurgy and back into the actual forming process, and even back further into the design sequence" so I don't know what you're getting at there. When metal parts fail in manufacture you have complete insight into the part's entire life cycle up to that point from the process it was undergoing at the time of failure all the way back to the ore coming out of the ground. Not so when looking at pics of a broken fork on the internet or even in hand.

Please don't read this as a personal attack. I'm just saying that nobody should be optimistic about getting the satisfying conclusion they seem to be expecting, because there's no realistic path from here to there.

[slide]

Originally Posted by reenmachine

Sure. The thread is here and if anybody has a failure they can post it up. Until then, there's not really any reason to post. Even then, without having the parts in hand in a lab environment there's not much one can do, regardless of education or background, but speculate.

Without inside access to BMW, there's no way you can "look across all of the metallurgy and back into the actual forming process, and even back further into the design sequence" so I don't know what you're getting at there. When metal parts fail in manufacture you have complete insight into the part's entire life cycle up to that point from the process it was undergoing at the time of failure all the way back to the ore coming out of the ground. Not so when looking at pics of a broken fork on the internet or even in hand.

Please don't read this as a personal attack. I'm just saying that nobody should be optimistic about getting the satisfying conclusion they seem to be expecting, because there's no realistic path from here to there.

Too bad you're forced to be on this thread instead of investigating The Truth About Mitt as told to you by the secret agents of Harry Reid.

[SilkMoneyLove]

So...is this happening to other new BMW gs bikes or is this a 1 in 10,000 unit failure?

[WayneC1]

This is the only known failure in the new model and I hope it is the only one, the reasons for it are unknown

[studioe6]

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" ?

[KansasBob]

Originally Posted by studioe6

With that said, IMHO after re-reading the entire thread and more thought to what others have posted........

The axel is definitely bent... 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.

"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.

[PeterW]

Originally Posted by studioe6

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" ?

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

[TREE]

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 ?

[KansasBob]

Originally Posted by TREE

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.