2011 bmw g 650 gs fork failure

[galland1]

Originally Posted by sop

research the legal doctrine: Joint and several liability. It matters not what factor(s) caused the fork to fail, which party in the entire chain of design, manufacture or sale is/was negligent, or whether the failure was due to poor design, inadequate metals, damaged components, improper assembly, or poor dealer set-up or adjustment.

Document your injuries carefully. Take lots of pictures or videos, clearly showing the full extent of your injuries/scrapes/bruises/swelling/road rash/effects and limitations on your daily activities/etc. Before they begin to subside.

Have someone take photos of the accident scene, especially the road surface at the point where the incident took place.

Don't give any other statements to anyone unless advised to do so by, and in the the presence of, your attorney.

Don't let anyone remove, replace the damaged bike/parts from your (or your attorney's) possession. Don't have any repairs performed.

Accept no insurance settlements or sign any releases for the damage/total loss to the bike, even from your own collision insurance carrier (if you have collision coverage on your bike), and certainly not from the bike manufacturer's/dealer's liability insurance carrier/adjuster, if any insurance payments/drafts state: "for full and final settlement of all claims".

Talk to an attorney and refrain from discussing these details and posting pics on an open forum.

this

[acejones]

What does the dealer have to say ?

[Shaykon Qwinney]

Originally Posted by Max Kool

Stupid question maybe, but shouldn't we be able to see the spring inside the fork leg here?

The spring would be located above the dampening rod which is visible in the pic. The bent axle is tripping me out almost as much as the break. WTF?

[catang5oh]

Yeh, that axle is bent pretty bad. You dont bend an axle just laying it down, i agree that thing had to hit something pretty solid.

[lemieuxmc]

1. She didn't hit anything.

2. I've seen lots of bikes that have hit things and plenty of bikes that got catapaulted down the road after a crash, in 40 years the only time I've ever seen this type of broken fork slider at the axle mount was on these BMW's.

3. DO NOT LET BMW GET POSSESION OF THE FORKS!!!

4. Talk to a real serious product liability lawyer; I assure you that even the most aggressive lawyer that you can find will not be nearly as aggressive as the ones on team BMW already.

5. Don't post anymore info about the severe and life altering injuries (or lack of them) incurred when you were suddenly and violently slammed onto the pavement when the forks failed.

6. Ignore almost all of the advice and/or opinions posted here (except mine and a couple of other folks who are obviously questionable characters because they post on this forum).

Good Luck, and let us know what happens after the dust settles.

[Maxacceleration]

Just wow, crazy. Lawyer up.
I don't believe you should have to put up any money up front with a lawyer should he/she decide to take the case.
They usually know if they can win the case before they take it on.
Hobble to your attorneys office!

[rc mad]

Originally Posted by Max Kool

Stupid question maybe, but shouldn't we be able to see the spring inside the fork leg here?





The axle was bent, why? missing spring in right leg?

Come to think of it, let's say it WAS missing. Wouldn't that be causing the axle to bend exactly the way we see it in the picture here above?

Nope, no spring should be visable there, whats in there is the damper rod and the ally spacer at the bottom there is a small rebound spring in that section but its trapped between the inner and outer fork so also not visable. The main Spring sits on top of the damper rod in these forks.

I'm betting the cause of the bent axle is the accident caused by the fork leg letting go and nothing else. the design of those legs is not easy to see with the picture, AntiqueWidow could you compare your forks with the other posted in the thread to identify weahter yours are of the early or later design?

Glad i ditched those forks now. Hope you heal well AntiqueWidow

[bomber1965]

Originally Posted by MoTOpsYcHO

Just saying. This failure going down the road at 40 MPH sounds fishy. Lets see how this plays out.

not fishy to me, I've seen catastrophic failure plenty of times operating heavy equipment over 25 years.


there are just too many identical events to smell fish.

[acesandeights]

Forks typically don’t break on impact, they bend.

It’s all speculation from us Interwebs folk, but I was an insurance adjuster handling motorcycle claims for the largest insurer of motorcycles in the US, ASE certified in damage analysis, blah, blah, and my experience has been that if this damage is from an impact the forks will have an obvious bend/bow in them.

There aren’t enough detailed photos for me to make a determination/conclusion. Based on what the OP contends, and if there isn’t a bend in the forks to make me think otherwise, (if I were still an adjuster) I’d have a forensic engineer/lab looking at those forks.

[antiquewidow]

[Dash2]

uggh, ive got a 2011 g650gs, even if my forks never fail it is now going to be the first thing i think about every time i sit on it. so im going to the ducati dealer tomorrow. is it possible the bent axle was from shipping? strapping the bike down, or are they boxed? i dont know how motorcycles are shipped. hope your felling better antiquewidow.

[cdnskiwi]

First, certainly glad that you are okay antiquewidow. Second, I can't believe this has happened on the new design fork slider. Third, I'm ticked that I spent hard earned $$ on new sliders proactively for my '02, just to be on the safe side - now who knows

Take good care and make sure BMW is taken to the cleaners on this one

[Benesesso]

Originally Posted by WayneC1

A second metallurgist has looked at the pic's and his response is :-


"It appears to be a one time overload fracture"

Agree with the "one time" part, but we must be careful with the word "overload". From the obvious lack of distortion/stretching, etc. at the fracture, it is a brittle fracture for sure.

But an overload has to be related to something, e.g., design loads or an overload for the condition of the metal/part. If a given part has a design limit of X, there is/should be a factor of safety that is applied. For steel lifting cables, the factor of safety is 5. A cable rated for a safe working load of 1,000 lb. must be able to withstand a load of 5,000 lb.

A metallurgical overload is different from a design one. A part may be manufactured way too thin by error, such that a full design load would be an overload. But a metallurgical overload condition does not consider what the design load/proof load is.

There are brittle fractures, ductile fractures, fatigue fractures, stress corrosion fractures, corrosion fatigue fractures, etc. Overload fractures, also called gross overload fractures, are either ductile or brittle, or some combination of each. So far the visual evidence of these latest forks indicates a brittle overload fracture. It means that for whatever reason, the applied load/stress exceeded the material's ability to withstand it.

Some of the factors which can cause an overload fracture include things which concentrate stresses, such as threads, holes, casting porosity, excessive surface roughness, and other casting problems.

In a tough material, such as nuke submarine hulls and nuke power reactor pressure vessels, an overload fracture usually involves a lot of physical distortion, bending, stretching, etc., and the actual fracture mode is known as shear. In a brittle material, the mode is not shear, but is cleavage right thru the individual grains of metal, along certain atomic planes. There is little or no physical distortion involved.

Both of these fracture modes are known as transgranular (thru the grain), while fractures involving hydrogen are usually intergranular (between the grains)--almost certainly not the case for these forks.

So, what we appear to have is a one-time, brittle overload fracture, but of course that does not explain why it occurred. Did a small bump in the road raise the local stress at some casting defect beyond a critical crack-initiation level? A tough material would likely be able to handle high local stresses because it plastically yields a bit, whereas a brittle material could not yield. When a critical stress level is reached in a brittle material, sudden fracture occurs. The speed of such fractures has been estimated at a mile per second in long steel pipelines when the temperature decreased below the tough/brittle transition temp.--aka ductile/brittle trans. temp.

Alum. doesn't have steel-like transition temps., so the riding temp. isn't an issue here.

BTW, finished the camping trip--too many bugs, including biting horse flies. Tried OFF!, a little help but not enough. Guess I'm getting soft--but NOT brittle!

[Bill Harris]

Whew, this is shocking. When I first saw this thread yesterday, I said "ah, newbie, dumped the bike", but the photos tell a different story. That fracture is incomprehensible. So mum's the word for you, antiquewidow we'll find out more when the legal dust settles.

Sorry that I doubted.

But don't let this deter you-- motorbiking is fun...

[PeterW]

Originally Posted by cdnskiwi

First, certainly glad that you are okay antiquewidow. Second, I can't believe this has happened on the new design fork slider. Third, I'm ticked that I spent hard earned $$ on new sliders proactively for my '02, just to be on the safe side - now who knows

Take good care and make sure BMW is taken to the cleaners on this one

Fork breaks at one end, wheel veers sideways, puts enormous forces on the axle, bends axle.

Don't see any reason to assume the axle was bent to start with here.

Pete