wtf is that?

I recently met a friend that has a brand new f650. Shes put about 150 miles on it(new rider) when it started overheating. I heard this all secondhand so i may be vague. She looked at the sightglass and the bike appeared to have no coolant. she drained the resivor and what slightly resembled coolant colored toothpaste came out. the bike is off to the dealership for repair but does anyone have any idea what that stuff could be? ill take a pic of it next time i see her. short of not knowing what the stuff is are there any long term implications of this thick crap sloshing around in the coolant resivor, i dont think the bike every actually overheated. Lastly the dealership told her she would have to wait two weeks for a service appointment, this sounds like a setup/prep problem to me, any thoughts?

matt

That my friend, it the unmistakeable top-flight quality control of BMW!!!! And exactly one of the major reasons I want not for a NEW BMW.

gararnett said:

That my friend, it the unmistakeable top-flight quality control of BMW!!!! And exactly one of the major reasons I want not for a NEW BMW.

Click to expand...

FWIW, Tina's R1150R has been flawless.

YMMV, of course.

my gs has been flawless too, i actually had not heard of qc issues from bmw before, guess it can happen to any company. the disappionting thing is how it is being handled, but they are not done yet so we will see.

Which north carolina dealer is putting her off for 2 weeks?

it was bmw/duc of charlotte. when she told me i was a bit surprised as i have had pretty good experiences with them since the change in ownership. I know they are backed up as i had to schedule my last service a couple weeks out but this is definately a setup or qc problem and i would think they would be pretty quick to jump on the opportunity to fix it. the bad thing is the last time i talked to her she was telling me that her bike is crap, refurbished and talking about going with a hd . i havent talked to her since the day it went in so hopefully things have been resolved. One thing i did think intresting is that she has a bmw auto, she commented on the difference in the level of service between the auto and bike divisions, followup calls by bmwna to check on satisfaction of service and product/do anything to make you happy(not always realistic but they could atleast pretend) and such. hate to think we might lose one of the fold due to poor service/product experiences.

matt

Car versus Motorcycle

I agree with the statement that BMW Motorcycle NA is not the most responsive. It took them three months to reply to a query I had about service and warranty on a new bike.

When they did call back, they indicated that they did not have an answer and would call me back. Oh yeah, that was September.

On the other hand, when looking at cars recently I went to the local BMW dealer and was looked down at and was not talked to --- I did not look I could afford a 325i to them. Same payment and I am now driving a Mercedes.

Told my motorcycle dealer, and well they were surprised. Have had nothing but great and professional service from the motorcyle dealer.

-=Brad

<< Welcome to the NEW BMW Korporation which is run by a bagfull of sphincters. After-sales service consists of taking your money, telling you that there are no user serviceable parts inside.>>

But you're not bitter about it, right?

-----------
Wil in sunny Arizona
K75S/F650CS

<< I don't buy BMWs anymore. I ride bikes that were made for BMW by Aprilia. >>

So you've stuck with pre-2000 F650s -- nothing newer, no other models?

Your choice, of course. I enjoy and benefit from modern things like fuel injection, ABS, tubeless tires. Then again, there are people who think the R/5 was the ultimate BMW and everything since is junk. You pays your money, you takes your chances, you pays the consequences.

<< You misspelt "surging and stalling." Carbs can be fixed anywhere. Fool Injection requires opening your wallet to a BMW dealer. Nope. That version of "modern" is not for me. >>

Like I said, we each make our choices. When I was in my 20s I did all my own service because my time wasn't worth as much as the money. These days (in my 40s) time means much more to me than the money, so if anything significant needs to be done, I'd rather pay someone else to do it because I have other things I'd rather be doing with my time.

So for me (and apparently for lots of others), having rebuildable carburetors is not an advantage. In fact I'd consider it a disadvantage, not only for the poorer mileage and fuel range of carbureted bikes, but because of the more frequent service carbs require. Carbs may be easier to service, but they need a lot more service -- I'm not sure that's a net advantage.

This reminds me of the debates 20 - 30 years ago about electronic ignition. A lot of people back then moaned about how easy it was to change the points on an old-fashioned distributor, and how them newfangled electronic units couldn't be serviced and were expensive to replace. But what everyone found was that while distributors and points were cheap to service, the "newfangled and expensive" electronic ignition had the advantages of being much more reliable and lasting far longer with no service whatsoever. It didn't matter that electronic ignition units were expensive to service because, unlike points, an electronic ignition unit will quite likely outlive the car.

In fact, the advent of all those newfangled gadgets -- electronic ignition, fuel injection, computer control -- has made possible engines that provide better fuel economy while also delivering higher power, greater longetivity, and needing far less service overall. (Remember having to do tune-ups on your car every few thousand miles?) I'd have to say that all in all cars are much better today because of things like fuel injection and related gee-whiz gizmology. And that's true for bikes, too, though we're lagging a bit behind cars in this regard.

So bring on the new technology -- I'm all for it.

I agree with Flash whole-heartedly. As for fool-injection, it amazes me that the Japanese can make a f-i bike that has no complaints, yet the "vastly superior BMW" makes f-i that gets a lot of comments on surging, and will not reply to the complaints - just denies that it happens. Now you might say that the new dual plug bikes are the answer to this problem on the twins, but that does nothing to prove that BMWAG or BMWNA cares the least about its customers since they have continued to deny the problem and blame it on rider fault/inability to ride properly. This is a B.S. response. It was a test ride on a BMW K1200RS and a R1150GS that drove me to buy a Suzuki Hayabusa. A ludite I'm not, but anything new from BMW, I shall not have.

And with all of the problems the newer F's have had, I'm glad I never considered buying one. And a final note on BMW and customer service, it has been reported that BMW has been denying waranty claims for overheating on "Owner Modified Bike" where the owner installed fork gaiters to protect the forks/seals. How they can make that claim that fork gaiters cause overheating with a straight face is mind boggling. You would think any half-azzed engineer making a bike designed to go off-road would not make a cooling system so fragile that the addition of fork gaiters would cause it to overheat. Its insane.