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Fuel strip poll

Have you had at least ONE fuel strip fail?


  • Total voters
    835
Probably because fewer BMW riders have complained.

That'll be the day!

I think it's because Harley is obviously more responsive to their owners, and to this engineer as well, to quote the article...

"...a Harley-Davidson Current Product Engineering reliability engineer reported that a test bike unexpectedly ran out of fuel."

I have been buying BMWs for 43 years and I cannot remember when they took the blame for anything. It was always the poor gas, the heat in the US, the poor maintenance, the extra keys on your ignition key ring, and so forth. I think it's a mindset never to publically take blame for anything. You'll always get an argument. If they fix it, it's a gift and accolades are expected.
We should be grateful that it's the best bike out there...when it's running. Seriously :)
 
Why the delay?

The point is that stands out to me is the fact that "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a recall notice?" - in less than a month. BMW owners have been complaining for what is it now? 6-8 years?

So the NHTSA only jumps on an issue when the manufacture admits there is an issue???

Dean Stuckmann
'82 and '83 Honda Turbos - Fuel level reads fine.
 
I want to thank all the people who reported to NHTSA with their fuel strip failures. I believe it finally had an effect. Earlier this week BMW sent a SIB to their dealerships telling them that fuel strips are now guaranteed for 12 years from "in-service" (day the bike first left the showroom) date.

I think the combination of failing fuel pump flanges (50,000 bike recall), a "park bike" warning to owners of the new watercooled R1200RT, and the possibility of NHTSA taking action on our fuel strip failures prompted this action.

I also suspect (no hard data) that BMW has solved the QC problem on the strips since I haven't heard of any strips that were replaced after about May of last year (2013) failing. Back in March or April 2013 BMW sent notice to their dealerships to send back any strips they had in the parts stock, and these were replaced by new ones. The part number didn't change.. but the failure rate seems to have changed. My local dealer's service manager told me they haven't seen any repeat failures on ones changed after the new fuel strips arrived.. which sounds like a good outcome.

Thanks again for taking the time to report the failures, and if anyone does have a failure of a strip installed after 5/2013 - please let me know (a PM would be good..) since I like to keep track of these sort of things (gathering data..)

BTW - for the people who paid for a replacement strip - I think you have an excellent argument to approach BMW (via your dealer) for a refund of the part/labor cost, since the strip now would be a warranty replacement.
 
Replace strip at own cost, 2005 R1200ST with 31,000 miles on it. Hopefully the last time I will have to pay for this "marvel" of engineering.
 
07 rt

Failed 50K kms ago, in 03/11 & just use the trip odometer. After reading all the failures, decided to live w/o it.
 
OK. Thanks for the guidelines. We just had the 7th fuel strip fail on an '08 R1200GS. I may have said 7 before, but this time I made the NHTSA complaint and was carful to recall each strip that failed and we're at 7.

OK...our dealer here in Urbana just replaced the failed strip. After fill up, it displays a reasonable "range".
I'm thinking positive about this...
 
09RT Fuel Strip

2009 RT, 27,500 miles, 3rd fuel strip failed last week, scheduled for replacement at Morton's BMW in August.
Covered by part warranty I think.
 
2010 R1200RT -- new to me May, 2010, strip just failed a couple of weeks ago with 32K miles on the bike. I haven't arranged for repairs as yet but since I just got the fuel pump recall notice for this bike, I'm hoping they'll take care of both under warranty.
 
I have a 2005 R1200rt, I bought it in 2011 with just under 50000 miles. This week I just passed 64,000 when my fuel strip went out on my trip this past week. I don't know the history of the bike before I bought it, but I thought that at that high a mileage I had a bike with a float instead of a strip since some of the threads I'd read people have had multiple strips replaced in very short periods of time. I called the dealer and they informed me of the 12 year warranty on them. BTW, the dealer did my fuel pump flange in June when I was getting new tires and valve adjustments.
 
I'm on my third strip on my '09 GSA; I've just gone back to old skool: I rest the trip meter and use that for my gas gauge, assuming 40 mpg. The electronic gauges has been completely worthless and as accurate as watch bought from a back alley vendor.
 
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