• 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?

  • Beginning April 1st, and running through April 30th, there is a new 2024 BMW MOA Election discussion area within The Club section of the forum. Within this forum area is also a sticky post that provides the ground rules for participating in the Election forum area. Also, the candidates statements are provided. Please read before joining the conversation, because the rules are very specific to maintain civility.

    The Election forum is here: Election Forum

R1200rt-servo brakes strange occurance

ducster

New member
Today after having picked up my 06 R1200 RT from getting the fuel strip replaced, I stopped in a dealership near me that is having a Yamaha demo day tomorrow to make sure I knew when the rides started. When I started the bike up to head home the brake failure light came on,but did not go out once I started moving as it is supposed to. I realized that I had no rear brakes and reduced stopping power on the front. Since I was only 5 minutes from home and did have a fair amount of front brake pressure I carefully rode home. Once there I went inside to take my gear off and then came back to see if I could see anything wrong. Nothing obvious, so I started the bike up and heard the servos firing up. I rode down the driveway to see if the problem was still there. The brakes were back to normal. I shut the bike off, restarted and everything was fine again. I rode it to the gas station,filled up, restarted and all was fine.

Any one have an idea about what may have happened? Was the RT expressing anger towards me for stopping at a Japanese bike dealership?:D
 
Sometimes low battery voltage causes this, sometimes it is from firing the bike up w/out letting it "boot up".
Our 1100, 1150, and 1200's have done it at some point. Our K1200S's are really finicky about booting up the display and self check sequence.

That and you stopped at that other dealer:stick
 
Several years ago on a trip to California I had the ABS warning light on 5 or 6 times during the trip. This was on a 03 K1200RS with servo brakes.
When the light was flashing I still had servo brakes, but no ABS. I had the bike checked when we got home and a Load Test showed the battery was weak. The bike started fine every time on the trip.
I replaced the battery and never had the ABS problem again.

On my wife's K1200RS if she did not let the bike do a self check before she started it she would not have servo brakes for the first little bit. My bike was not fussy about the self check, I could turn on the key and start the bike without waiting for the self check. Debbie's bike needed to complete the self check before hitting the start button.
 
I don't think the battery is weak, though I will check that out tomorrow. I probably didn't give enough time to for everything to "boot up" as was mentioned.
Thanks for the responses.
 
Battery and Servo

I had a funny feeling about my servo brakes as I had to squeeze just a little harder recently when first starting up. I thought it was my imagination, but I know my bikes peculiarities well as it is. 05Rt and I have owned her for the past 5 years. I put a new Odyssey battery in last April and I was thinking, no it can't be the battery. Well yesterday, the Nike would only turn over 2x before kaput. Even though the Bat Tender was all green. I exchange the battery under warranty for a new replacement, wha la, no issue with servo when first firing up when foot peddling the bike and braking. Apparently a cell was going bad causing the servo issue and yesterday it went bad giving a false positive on the Bat a Tender charge and only having enough juice on the one cell or cells,to turn over twice before dying. Moral of the story; a healthy battery appears to make all thendifference when these brakes are concerned.
 
Back
Top