• Welcome, Guest! We hope you enjoy the excellent technical knowledge, event information and discussions that the BMW MOA forum provides. Some forum content will be hidden from you if you remain logged out. If you want to view all content, please click the 'Log in' button above and enter your BMW MOA username and password.

    If you are not an MOA member, why not take the time to join the club, so you can enjoy posting on the forum, the BMW Owners News magazine, and all of the discounts and benefits the BMW MOA offers?

What is this doohickey? (Adventure Top Case)

kencollier

New member
My buddy and I were comparing our new R1200GS's the other day and noticed that my BMW Adventure top case has a plastic doohickey bolted on next to the latch that his doesn't have. It doesn't appear to have any function, but it's obviously well designed and bolted onto the case. Can anyone shed light on what this is for? It's circled in red in the picture below.
 

Attachments

  • AdventureTopCase.JPG
    AdventureTopCase.JPG
    61.3 KB · Views: 820
It's an air vent to prevent the lid from getting stuck shut by lower pressure inside the case.

I've had it happen on my side cases (which do not have the vents), though it was not so severe as to prevent me from opening the lids. I have however had water get sucked in past the lid seal when I've encountered a sudden cold rain shower that caused the air in the relativly empty case to contract creating a vacuum inside. I've considered fitting the vents to avoid having it happen again.
 
Riding at altitude,(in mountains) can make the cases very hard to open.
I'd keep that vent closed in the rain!! (unless You're riding at high altitudes..)
 
Riding at altitude,(in mountains) can make the cases very hard to open.
I'd keep that vent closed in the rain!! (unless You're riding at high altitudes..)

These vents on my cases don't seem to open or close. In fact, just by looking at them it's impossible to tell where the air flows in/out. So I'm guessing they're designed to prevent water from coming in.
 
Vents

I had a problem with BMW cases on my GSA collecting moisture after riding in a hard rain. My dealer said he would install those little vents. I thought he was crazy. Presto, no more moisture in the cases. Rode in a lot of hard rain yesterday and my cases stayed dry. They also eliminate the sealed case in higher elevations mentioned earlier.
 
The tight seal on altitude or temp changes also happens on the 1200 R/RT plastic luggage.
First time it happened to me I thought something had broken in latch linkage but it was just "vacuum sealed". Don't get anything in the RT cases when it happens, though, and AFAIK no vent has been introduced for them. The stock cases are good stuff though various arguments can be made for the best of the aftermarket stuff for the GS.
 
Back
Top