• 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?

Solve this electrical challenge 2005 r1200gs

espressoforyou

New member
I ride a 2005 r1200gs with 41,000 miles on it. Four weeks ago I started to have some electrical problems. My heated hand grips, both blinkers, trip meter, flashers, horn, and rear brake light(tail light worked fine) all stopped working. My brake failure light started flashing rapidly and the servos worked sometimes but not all the time. Some times my front servo worked but not my rear servo. This may or may not have any bearing on the problem but my high beam "out" indicator was the first thing I noticed acting up about two month prior. It would intermittently show the high beam not working.

The first thing I tried to correct the problems was to replace the battery, but that did not help. Then I removed the gas tank and check the computer connectors and did not see any corrision when I removed the connectors.

I drove the bike from Memphis to Nashville last week to drop it off at Bloodworth BMW for repairs. On the 200 mile trip to Nashville the high beam "out" indicator warring light went disappeared at about 190 miles into the trip. When I exited the expressway after riding 200 miles I checked to see if my electrical problems were still acting up since my high beam appeared to be working. All my controls worked fine for the first time in a month and I was only 1 mile away from the dealership. I stopped to get gas and everything worked fine when is restarted the bike. I made one more stop and turned the bike off to see if the problems would return and the problems DID return(thanks goodness or I would not have been able to show the service writer the problems). I arrived at the dealership and showed David the issues I was having. David kept focusing in on the high beam "out" indicator light.

Does any body have any idea what is going on with my bike? Thanks for your help.
 
Best guess would be that you have a "floating" earth (ground) connection in one of your Computer connections, giving a constant changing voltage to the device.
It also could be a partial short on the positive side, giving the same symptoms, but less likely as I would then expect to see a discharging battery over a shorter period of time.
I hope that the Tech is good with a multimeter, as he could be in for a true headache, unless he finds a fault code that really narrows the field for him.
 
Alfred02, thanks for your suggestion

I think you could be correct with the floating ground thing. Sounds like a lot of fun tracking down. I have my bike at Bloodworth BMW in Nashville and I could tell they were not looking forward to solving this problem when I dropped it off. I will keep you posted.
 
Back
Top