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Fuel strip poll

Have you had at least ONE fuel strip fail?


  • Total voters
    835
Another one:

It was a beautiful ride this morning in spite of the new chip sealed road with loose piles of chips, two dogs running loose on the road, two deer out of the cornfield and across the road and another fuel strip quit functioning. Nothing unusual, including the fuel strip. Made it home safely though and enjoyed the ride. Will navigate thru the NHTSA site to share my thoughts.
 
When was your bike put into service? On a 2007 it's possible you're out of the 12 year extended warranty from BMW.

FWIW - there is only one relay on your bike - the starter relay. If it goes bad you won't start. There certainly have been instances where a brand new strip failed - happened to one of mine. My bike got 2 strips in a day that time. If the strip is an issue - it's covered by BMW's 2 year parts warranty. If you're lucky (or clever) you'll never have a fuel strip last longer than 23 months once you bought one.

Good luck with it..

BTW - you might want to fill out a vehicle complaint form on the NHTSA website for a vehicle failure that could cause death or injury (if you ran out of fuel in the wrong place..) There are instructions back a bunch of pages in this thread on how to do it and make it effective. If enough of those accumulate maybe BMW can be goaded into making right on these and coming up with a design that works. There is one private owner who came up with a circuit for it allowing for the use of the old fashioned mechanical float mechanism. I'm sure Seimens or Bosch has some clever engineers - they just need incentive $$$$ from BMW.

I bought a fuel strip only to find out I couldn't set it up without the BMW controller so I had to take it to the dealer where they set it up only to have it fail 2x in their shop. They warranted the strip even though I bought it from another dealer. I still had to pay them labor but I took the machine to them with no plastic on it so I saved some labor. I guess my way of thanking the dealer for the help is when I go there in two days to trade the machine on a 2109 R1250RT...so I guess I won't have a fuel strip problem again.
I have to admit I really enjoyed My 2007 RT having moved it across the country with me on it and rode it to the Grand Canyon a few times a year just to sit and stare at the canyon drinking my coffee. I was looking at a 2016 but the wife asked me how many more motorcycles I will buy? I said I figure I'll go at least another 12 years so she told me to get a new one. And yes she is a keeper!
 
2008 R1200RT friends bike

A friend asked me to take a look at his fuel indication problem. I did the zapper "fix" with no change. Have previously done this on my 2005 RT with good results and no failure in 10k miles. I attempted an Ebay used strip replacement and it would not pass the calibration check with the GS911 tool. I was able to find out that my friends bike has had the strip replaced 4 times in the past 9 years. Resistance check between pins 1& 4 showed in excess of 6M ohms. Check between pins 2 & 3 showed 4.5K ohms.
So I decided to take one of the strips completely apart to really see how they are put together and if anything is obviously damaged. Upon take the plastic covers apart and removing the film strip, nothing was visually noted. Breaking off the epoxy potting and splitting the fiberglass tabs that hold the wires in position and making contact with the strip, I noted obvious burn marks at the #4 connection. The remaining connections appeared to have marginal to poor contact. It is possible that I created the burn mark using my zapper, but this also indicates an open in the wiring connection. In my mind this is an obvious production issue in assembling the film strip wiring to the actual hard wire connections. The film strip is fairly durable on its own and when contained in it's plastic housing is pretty stout. It would have to be severely manhandled to be damaged during removal or installation. It seems that BMW is cognizant of the production issue and therefore the 12 year warranty.
In my opinion the production issue needs to be addressed, with either a better build or a completely different design. This problem will not go away on its own after 12 years of constantly replacing fuel strips, and buying a new bike with a different fuel metering system is not an acceptable solution.
 
Why should I have any confidence this is even a remotely reliable technology when compared to a simple float system? I am sure this technology is used in other applications, but where? And why? I remember it failed BMW in 1983-1985. And it has failed them here again.
 
Why should I have any confidence this is even a remotely reliable technology when compared to a simple float system? I am sure this technology is used in other applications, but where? And why? I remember it failed BMW in 1983-1985. And it has failed them here again.

Paul - it is used (or was) in some 4 wheel vehicles (Volvo comes to mind, not a paragon or reliability for a while now..) The strip design uses a similar theory but an entirely different physical design to the K bike series fuel sensors of 83-85. I suspect they thought it was better. That's what a loss of corporate memory does to a company. Everyone who remembered how bad the 83-85 design was - was either retired, bumped upstairs or dead. There was no one around to say "NO! Oh NO!"

Someone has come up with a float-based replacement design using a small interface to the bike's electronics. I recall reading about it about 2-3 years ago. It seemed to work well but it was not ready for mass production. If a private individual could do it - I'm sure BMW could pressure whoever made the current disaster to do it too, and have a real solution to the problem. I have to 2024 on my '12 R12R that I'm still under the 12 year warranty.

Given the general stubborness of BMW to ever admit fault (the Tom Cutter theory is - they can't admit fault while the original engineer is still around.. it would be insulting to him..) I doubt if they'll ever do anything substantive to actually fix the issue. I'm sure the fuel strip vendor is eating the costs of replacing the defective ones under warranty, so no financial skin off BMW's nose. About all that might work would be an NHTSA campaign (which I've outlined in this thread several times) to have a recall issued (Harley got one for the same sort of defective sensor) - but I think NHTSA has become a toothless tiger now, and it's unlikely they'd actually do anything.. The people I developed a relationship there (involving a recall by Porsche for exploding engines) - are no longer answering emails.

Either they're not there any more, or know not to poke big manufacturers. I seem to becoming more like an "airhead" - only in this case it's an "oilhead" sort of bent. Nothing they currently make would make me walk into the show room and ask to sit on anything. Must be me.
 
Fuel Strip Poll

The replacement of the original strip (bike had ~17,000 miles at failure) on my 2009 BMW 1200RT lasted 500 miles. Now at dealers for two months: they have installed 3 new so far with instant failures. Maybe the solution is to accept blinking lights and use trip meter to determine gas level (works on my '97 Honda Valkyrie just fine). Other solution is to sell the thing. I expect more from BMW, especially for a bike that cost $18,500 new in 2009.
 
A friend asked me to take a look at his fuel indication problem. I did the zapper "fix" with no change. Have previously done this on my 2005 RT with good results and no failure in 10k miles. I attempted an Ebay used strip replacement and it would not pass the calibration check with the GS911 tool. I was able to find out that my friends bike has had the strip replaced 4 times in the past 9 years. Resistance check between pins 1& 4 showed in excess of 6M ohms. Check between pins 2 & 3 showed 4.5K ohms.
So I decided to take one of the strips completely apart to really see how they are put together and if anything is obviously damaged. Upon take the plastic covers apart and removing the film strip, nothing was visually noted. Breaking off the epoxy potting and splitting the fiberglass tabs that hold the wires in position and making contact with the strip, I noted obvious burn marks at the #4 connection. The remaining connections appeared to have marginal to poor contact. It is possible that I created the burn mark using my zapper, but this also indicates an open in the wiring connection. In my mind this is an obvious production issue in assembling the film strip wiring to the actual hard wire connections. The film strip is fairly durable on its own and when contained in it's plastic housing is pretty stout. It would have to be severely manhandled to be damaged during removal or installation. It seems that BMW is cognizant of the production issue and therefore the 12 year warranty.
In my opinion the production issue needs to be addressed, with either a better build or a completely different design. This problem will not go away on its own after 12 years of constantly replacing fuel strips, and buying a new bike with a different fuel metering system is not an acceptable solution.

That’s exactly correct. I’ve disassembled a number of these strips and they all exhibited failure at the connector. The strip itself was always fine.
 
My fuel strip finally failed on my '07 Rt. 82,000 miles. In the beginning of this month I went to MAX BMW in North Hampton NH to check if it was still in warrantee. It was by less than a month. Now I have a 2 year warrantee.
 
My fuel strip finally failed on my '07 Rt. 82,000 miles. In the beginning of this month I went to MAX BMW in North Hampton NH to check if it was still in warrantee. It was by less than a month. Now I have a 2 year warrantee.

2-year warranty on the replacement fuel strip? I thought the replacement under the 12-year program was only a 1-year warranty...2 years if you bought the strip and had it installed if you paid for it.

Please elaborate...I resurrected an ‘06 RT for my nephew and had the strip replaced under the 12-year program, but it failed in less than 12 months and he didn’t get on it. Now it’s been 20 months since it was replaced.

UPDATE: I just spoke to the dealer that did this work. According to them, the 12 years is a hard limit... any replacement strip (according to them) has to be within the 12 year time frame from when the bike was originally placed in service.

In the meantime I did the piezo lighter ‘zapping’ trick and resurrected the fuel strip for now. We’ll see how long it lasts.

I did find there’s a guy out of the Netherlands that developed a conversion to a float-type sensor that costs about the same as a fuel strip.

https://www.proebeemer.nl/producten/float-control-2-voor-r1200rt/



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Fuel strip failure #4

2008 R12GSA, 73K. Missed the 12 year replacement by two months this time! Youtubed the "ZAP" method although it sounded like the "Hurt Locker" method to me, but decided to give it a go. Removed the BBQ igniter from the spud gun (it's Idaho!), a little insulation on the terminals, accessed the fuel strip plug and zapped away, as directed. Had a fire extinguisher handy. No drama. Buttoned back up, a short spin, fuel gauge works like it should! Will it last? Will have to see. Feeling pretty pumped right now, time for a cold beverage.

The "ZAP" fix of the fuel strip ended up lasting about 100 miles of pavement and less than a 100 feet of gravel road. Not sure if it's worth trying again.
 
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I purchased a 2009 R1200 GSA from a dealership in May of 2020. The bike had 21K miles on the clock. Later that same week of purchase, I went out for a ride. I checked the BC and it showed I had 300 miles of range. 10 miles later on the top of Spooner Summit at Lake Tahoe, I ran out of gas.

I called the dealership I bought the bike from and they took care of it.
 
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