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K75 ABS brake system

Are ABS brakes on a K75 worth having?

  • Not worth having or worth the trouble to keep working

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    1

heejrbmw

New member
Recently I have had a desire to move to a bike with ABS brakes. I know that some K75 bikes had ABS. I asked a local used motorcycle dealer who deals mainly with BMWs about ABS. He told me that his opinion of ABS on early BMWs is that they are not reliable. He was speaking of them being a maintenance problem with many repairs necessary. He also told me that in his opinion, one should buy a 2000 or later model to have reliable ABS on BMWs.

I'm looking for opinions on K75 ABS brakes. I found a 1995 with ABS that looks interesting. Is ABS on K75 bikes worth having? Is ABS on later models better or any more reliable? Opinions appreciated!

Ed
 
You might add a response on your poll for "works well and is very reliable". I have put 64,000 of the 94,000 miles on my 91 75RT and that has been my experience.
 
I didn't vote because neither answer is correct in our experience. We currently have 4 K75s. ABS works and has always worked. We previously had two other K75s. ABS always worked without defect or failure. One K75T did not have ABS. The combined miles on the ABS equipped bikes was well over 700,000 miles with no ABS issues.

So my vote would be worth having and works fine.

The cynic in me tells me that the dealer wanted to sell a newer bike.
 
The ABS on my '92 K100 - probably the same system as K75's, - failed at around 20K and none of the cheap fixes (recommended by numerous folk on this and the IBMWR site) worked. Given the number of posts on this topic before I brought up my woes, I think Paul Glave's experience is probably not the norm. The "fix" I've used on my bike for over two years is a piece of electrician's tape over that blinking light on the dash.

But if you want a K75 with ABS, I say get it! 1. It may not fail. 2. If it DOES fail, quite often there are simple and cheap fixes which will work. 3. If the failure is the "brain" which probably costs more than you paid for the bike, you can always use my system. My brakes are still excellent stoppers - just a little harder to flush than non-ABS brakes.

I believe later generations of ABS systems pulse faster than the first generation. Surely somebody will know whether the second generation were available before they stopped making K75's.

If you love K75's (and don't rule out the 4-valve K100RS from '91-92) get one. BTW, you cannot disable (intentionally) the ABS system on at least the earlier K-bikes, which is not a good thing if you ride a lot of gravel. But they are great road bikes.
 
So my vote would be worth having and works fine.

I agree Paul with having another response. I allowed the dealers bias to influence poll choices. Short-sighted on my part. Sorry. I have not yet figured out how to edit the poll. I'm still looking.

Thanks,
Ed
 
While all my bikes are pre-ABS, I've asked almost every owner of K75Ss with ABS that I've worked on, whether they've ever activated the ABS. Most have at least one story of when "it saved my ass".

It only takes once for it to be worth it's weight in gold. While ABS1 is crude compared to the newer versions, it is still valuable in emergency situations. The cost to fix defective ABS1 has gone WAY down since the advent of a couple of companies that can now repair the computers for a few hundred dollars.



:dance:dance:dance
 
Much to my surprise, my insurance carrier offered me a discounted rate because my bike has ABS. Score!

When I was looking for a K75, my goal was a bike without ABS. I found the perfect bike, right year, right color, and right price. However, it had ABS. I figured that it could be removed if I did not like it. Now I am glad it is there. Never have had any problems with it not working for the PO or myself. Almost 52K on the bike. I would willing to buy another bike with ABS. Maybe a K1100. Better brakes and better suspension.

Check with the guys over at motobrick.com. All they do is K bikes.
 
We had two 1991 K75S ABS equipped bikes with approx 90,000 miles for 12 years and didn't have any ABS problems.
 
My last bike was a 2002 R1150GS with ABS and to be honest, the only times I find ABS that helpful were in the rain, which I tried to avoid at all cost anyways. In dry conditions, I rarely need to brake hard enough to get the ABS going and when it does get activated, I start pumping the foot brake anyways just as I would in a car.
 
I rarely need to brake hard enough to get the ABS going and when it does get activated, I start pumping the foot brake anyways just as I would in a car.

If you have ABS, car or bike, why would you pump the brakes?
 
ABS is not intended for when everything is clean and dry and everthing is normal. Car or bike.

ABS is intended to help save your bacon when something is NOT normal (wet pavement, oil, sand, ice, a left turning blue hair that makes you grab a double fist full of brake lever and squeeze so hard you think your gonna bend the lever).

If you're activating the ABS in normal riding, you need to change your riding style. Car or bike.



:dance:dance:dance
 
My answer to the intent of the original question is:

If you are looking to buy a K75, get one with ABS if you can. It might save your skin or life.

If it should happen to fail in a way that is too expensive to fix, blank out the light and you are where you would be if you bought a non-ABS bike.
 
This.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've activated the ABS in ten years of driving cars with it. With fingers left over.

Living in a state that gets snow in the winter I activate the ABS in the car more than that in a week :) Same with the traction control.
 
Living in a state that gets snow in the winter I activate the ABS in the car more than that in a week :) Same with the traction control.

There are WAY too many of us driving cars with ABS who are still operating on "pre- ABS" habits - pumping the brake. The answer is slam down the brake in you car when you can safely do so on a rain/snow/ice slick road then see what happens. Probably want to do this at a fairly slow speed at first. My belief is that it takes REPEATED PRACTICE to overcome past habits when the chips are down. You have to build new habits, not try to re-think old ones.

If you have ABS on your bike (which you probably don't ride in snow or ice,) find a safe place to practice with it on wet pavement. Same comment about the need for REPEATED PRACTICE to replace old habits. I suggest you do this practice with the bike vertical. Unless my info is not current, bike ABS is not very effective when you are leaned over and should NOT be trusted except when vertical to the pavement.

Do enough ABS tests with your car and bike and I expect you will find available traction HIGHLY VARIABLE though the road surface may look the same. You MAY have 70% of the traction in the wet that you do in the dry on the same road. (Commonly mentioned figure.) You may also find some places slick as snot though they didn't look any different. So, get comfortable with activating the ABS frequently, then make your own decision about speed in a variety of scenarios.
 
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