2017 R1200GS Throttle Position Sensor Issue

Annie and I took off Friday for a two week ride around the west. Plan was to ride to Washington and the Cascade Hwy then south thru Oregon and spend a few days riding in northren Kalifornia. After that maybe Colorado.

We made it to Republic, WA on day one and camped. Then the rain started. Rain in the Pacific Northwest..... who knew?

On Saturday the ride on Hwy 20 was great. We were in and out of rain, but the scenery is fantastic and traffic very light. The Cascade Hwy is one of our favorites. We made it to Washington Pass where it was 39* and raining.

As we descended the west side the sky turned blue, birds chiped, the temperature rose and things turned into a smoldering pile of crap. Annie's Throttle Position Sensor, on her 2017 R1200GS with 4000 miles, stopped sensing and her bike would only idle. Happened as she was doing 60 MPH and she had to coast to the side of the road. After a restart the TPS functioned normally. We made it to Seattle BMW at 4 PM on Saturday and they were helpful in diagnosing the problem. It is a warranty issue but the part will take 4-5 days to get, after they order it on Tuesday. We decided to head for home and hope the TPS lasted. The mechanic in Seattle showed us a reset procedure and said it could work for a year or fail in 5 miles. Riding thru Seattle is a joy and doing it in heavy rain just more icing on the cake. We decided not to try to go over Snoqualmie Pass in frog choking rain so found a room in the Bates Motel. On Sunday the rain lifted and we made it to east WA before the TPS failed 4 times on I-90 within 80 miles. It was dangerous, of course, because it happened without warning. we got a room in Liberty Lake east of Spokane and on Monday I rode home (300 miles) and got our trailer and drove back to WA. There is a dealer in Spokane but we did not want to wait there to have it fixed.

We got the bike to Big Sky Motorsports yesterday. The Service Manager, Buster, and Master Tech, Andy, have always treated us well. I tend to only use the dealership for warranty work but both these guys have been great to deal with and competent in their jobs. Andy got on the bike right away and within an hour I see him riding away on a test ride. When he returns he says she is good to go. The TPS did not need replacement. There is a bulletin out that says if certain TPS related codes are present, then the tech is to change the tolerances that the main computer will accept from the TPS. The bulletin has been out since February. Annie rode the bike home (120 miles) without issue. I followed in my truck, pulling a trailer. I got the impression she is going to expect the Ewan and Charlie "Long Way Round" treatment in the future.

It all about the dealership they can make it or break it. Sorry you lost out on your vacation but it is about the adventure and you guys had that...

Glad you all are safe

Jay

I have been to the dealership in Seattle and was less than impressed. Glad you got it sorted!

I was happy with the way they treated us and their willingness to get to work on Annie's bike immediately. It is obviously disappointing that they did not catch that there is a bulletin out about how to handle the TPS issue. Would have saved us four days and several hundred dollars. I'm going to apply for trip interuption reimbursement.... we will see how that goes.

Well, that's aggravating. At least everyone is safe.
Maybe we could figure out where to find the list of TSB's and list them on the forum.
OM

Cascades Hwy

That is dis-heartening, especially on such a new bike. It is certainly an indication of the high level of tech on these bikes today. I just came back from a similar trip. I keep a '12 rt in Gig Harbor and took it up via back roads to 20 then headed east and 1st night was in Omak. As I was crossing Washington Pass around 5:30pm it was raining and I had been watching the temp drop and it 36F and the little snow flake symbol, along with the temp, started flashing so I slowed down a bit. From Omak I took 97 up across the border all the way up to Vernon. 97 sucked, 2 and 4 lanes choked with traffic most of the way, several towns with multiple traffic lights, trucks, etc. Leaving out of Vernon the next morning heading east on 6 was a different story, fabulous road, and probably the best section of the whole ride. Eventually swung back south and crossed the border on route 22 or 25. Tiny little crossing and maybe because it was so out of the way, the customs agent made me pull all my bags out (2 saddle and one top case) onto the ground and he went through them, but not too carefully. I'm global entry so I rarely get searched but well, goes with the territory I guess. I settled in Kettle Falls that night and continued on down, visited Grand Coulee dam, and then continued south making Richland, and the next day further south and then eventually west towards the coast through mid-Oregon. I tried to stay in the green and avoid the desert. 19South was a good road, a few stretches of 4-6 miles of straight through scrublands but numerous high hill ridges to cross through and the road snaked with nice sweepers through these areas so all in all, a good road. Next night in Springfield (burb of Eugene) and the hit the coast and ran 101 all the way back up. Washington's 101 is much more enjoyable on a bike then Oregon, but there are some nice vistas in Oregon. I'm thankful to an un-named Oregon State Trooper who let me off the hook with a warning, I was very lucky.

I'm heading back out there in October to get new pads all around, and a 24K service on the bike, and if the weather isn't too bad, then another 3-4 day run, maybe just out 20 and back through mid-Washington.




Did I mention all those free river crossing ferries? Nice break on the road...

Scotty

Sorry your trip was cut short, but glad to hear no one was hurt. Unexpectedly going from a throttle speed of 60 to 0 on an unfamiliar road in a fraction of a second is, to say the least, a very unsettling experience. The throttle response is so abrupt that I’ve always thought of it as a third brake.

Also, I’m having a real problem trying to figure out why the dealer was not aware of the service bulletin. It would seem that reading the bulletins would be the first thing a service manager would do in the morning while drinking his first cup of coffee.

OM’s suggestion about having a place to post the service bulletins as they come out is a great idea. However, as secretive as BMW is, I’m thinking that BMW will never give us meaningful real time access to them. But, I hope I'm wrong.

Easy

easy said:

Sorry your trip was cut short, but glad to hear no one was hurt. Unexpectedly going from a throttle speed of 60 to 0 on an unfamiliar road in a fraction of a second is, to say the least, a very unsettling experience. The throttle response is so abrupt that I’ve always thought of it as a third brake.

Also, I’m having a real problem trying to figure out why the dealer was not aware of the service bulletin. It would seem that reading the bulletins would be the first thing a service manager would do in the morning while drinking his first cup of coffee.

OM’s suggestion about having a place to post the service bulletins as they come out is a great idea. However, as secretive as BMW is, I’m thinking that BMW will never give us meaningful real time access to them. But, I hope I'm wrong.

Easy

Click to expand...

My guess : The issue will be, or is taken care of, when the bikes go in for whatever service is next ( 600, 6k, 12k service etc) as the techs always plug the bike in, and factory software upgrades get done by default. Techs at the dealership will find it hard to know about every factory software upgrade for each issue, for each model, for each year. BMW will. With something like this, which can lead to a immediate safety issue, one would think a service bulletin should be sent out to applicable owners to get the bike in immediate. At least that is the way it should be done IMO.

The head tech at our shop told us that things such as service bulletins and recalls are normally shown on the diagnostic computer when the bike is hooked up, but for this bulletin that was not the case. He said that it did not show up until he was deeper into the program while he was looking for it. He was looking because he remembered seeing the bulletin when it came out in February. Annie’s bike was the first he had seen with the issue the bulletin addressed. The bulletin does not direct modifying the software on every 2017, R1200GS. It says that the software change is to be made on bikes that present with a specific fault code that is related to the TPS. Annie now has 11,000 miles on the bike (7,000 since the failure) and the TPS has functioned normally.