BMW engineers do it right

Oh yes

Changing up from airheads to the oil head clutch job my friend did. BMW designed the wiring harness as one piece from front to back on the oil head. Eliminating the plug for the tail light sub harness meant the clutch job had to be done around the wiring harness as it could not be unplugged and separated when the bike had to be "broken" in half to change the clutch.

I won't go into "breaking" the bike in half to change a clutch, I have never had to on an airhead but this is an oil head and it is designed differently, and sorry to say in my eyes not better.

Designing out the plug in the middle of the main wire harness, obviously made it easier at the factory to install one harness instead of two, and saved money in build cost over the number of bikes made. Great for BMW! Not so for the mechanics who have to work on it.

Of course, if I were a BMW mechanic, I would love to be busy and be paid a fair price for my work, that is right and just. In the past when I was a mechanic, and working for an hourly wage, it didn't bother me in the least to take 8 hours to do a job, unless it interrupted my lunch breaks or something. Still, I had some choice words to say about nuts and bolts tucked away requiring me to buy a special wrench to reach, or in some cases a special tool.

I ended my career as a mechanic before the real nonsense with and bikes began as such, I don't have a tool box full of special tools to fit the manufacturer's design to repair a customer's car be it BMW, Honda, or Dodge. I have over time collected the BMW tools needed to work on BMW airhead motorcycles and thank goodness for that. They were expensive enough.

I am sorry, I stand by my comments BMW engineers don't always get it right. I guess I must modify that to say, they get it right for BMW with a balance tilted more to BMW than the customer. Yes, we as a customer get a good bike, but, we also get tied to a dealer, and high repair and maintenance costs. Not so much with the airhead bikes but I feel sorry for the newer bike owners when they have to go in for routine maintenance or repairs.

I will stick with my grumping about silly BMW engineering on my airheads, I have no desire to find out what engineering is like on newer bikes. My short visit to my friend's shop while he was doing the oil head clutch just reenforces my beliefs regarding BMW. St.

Neutral switch Steve.

PGlaves said:

This is only marginally related but relevant nonetheless less. I used to be a partner in a Civil Engineering, Land Survey, Planning, and Landscape Architecture firm. We did a lot of public works (streets, water line, sanitary sewer, storm sewer) projects as well as new subdivision design. We had a rule: The design engineer for a project had to be on the survey crew when doing the survey prior to design work and also had to be on the survey crew when the project, after design, was staked for construction.

After the first experience of having to do the field work before the design and again after the design our design work got much better and more precise. Things did not get overlooked. Once the engineers saw how it was easier to do it right the first time rather than re-design in the field things were a lot better.

If a company applied the same principals to the design of objects I think the results would be improved.

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I managed a new software development project for my company for several years. This was a partnership between a software company we owned a stake in and a software company from Uruguay who's product actually built applications. That company was not well known in the US, but was one of IBM's largest international partners. Everyone at the Uruguayan software company had at least a Master's in some IT technology field, so they were smart people. But, the smartest thing they did is to use the same people for both development and support. For one year developers would work on product development, then the next year they would only do product support, and then the next year back to development. That was pure brilliance. I watched their product improve at an incredible rate. Nothing broken stayed broken long. They were wonderful to work with. I've often wondered how much better just about anything complex would be if others followed that practice.

GREGFEELER said:

I managed a new software development project for my company for several years. This was a partnership between a software company we owned a stake in and a software company from Uruguay who's product actually built applications. That company was not well known in the US, but was one of IBM's largest international partners. Everyone at the Uruguayan software company had at least a Master's in some IT technology field, so they were smart people. But, the smartest thing they did is to use the same people for both development and support. For one year developers would work on product development, then the next year they would only do product support, and then the next year back to development. That was pure brilliance. I watched their product improve at an incredible rate. Nothing broken stayed broken long. They were wonderful to work with. I've often wondered how much better just about anything complex would be if others followed that practice.

Click to expand...

That's interesting as my former employee did a similar approach. (A Parking Systems manufacturer)

Our Test Engineer's were also our Field Support personnel, assisting our Systems Support people. What I saw in the field was relatable directly to Systems Support (the guys and gals taking the calls) and Developer's. This was a HUGE improvement in our product's once us TE's and Systems Support folks got a seat at the Stakeholder's meetings.

Everybody's opinion and experience was valued and in the end, we produced some truly remarkable products, IMHO.

RPGR90s said:

That's interesting as my former employee did a similar approach. (A Parking Systems manufacturer)

Our Test Engineer's were also our Field Support personnel, assisting our Systems Support people. What I saw in the field was relatable directly to Systems Support (the guys and gals taking the calls) and Developer's. This was a HUGE improvement in our product's once us TE's and Systems Support folks got a seat at the Stakeholder's meetings.

Everybody's opinion and experience was valued and in the end, we produced some truly remarkable products, IMHO.

Click to expand...

What amazes me is that more organizations don't adopt that kind of tight and fast feedback loop. Seems to me accurate knowledge about how to make you product better is the most valuable information you can have. But, then again, you would go broke fast betting on people to do the smart thing.

To stir the pot more

I understand BMW wants BMW trained mechanics to work on their bikes, it keeps the money in the BMW family however, I bet there are a lot of BMW mechanics making the same complaints about strange engineering things I am making. The difference is they are getting paid to do the work and like I said, when I was a mechanic, it didn't bother ME that wether it took ten minutes to do a job or 8 hours.

I am a crank and admit it, I don't like paying big money for service that should not require major hours of time to do.

I can add a non bike related story, my cousin's Dodge truck's heater core went out. Okay, he had replaced heater cores and has done work as a mechanic in the past. He decided to do the work himself only to find out the old school of having an access panel under the hood to get to the heater core now requires taking out the trucks, dashboard, steering column and AC coil. Plus, every little screw and panel in the dash board was plastic and there were a hundred of them. He did go to a shop and have it done and it cost him. Fine for the shop, but not so fine for him.

Now I don't know if a designer did the deed or a design engineer did the deed of making a one time simple repair a nightmare, all I know is it didn't come out of their pocket to pay the shop to have the work done. Oh yes, it may have saved Dodge a buck or two in the assembly, and maybe it enhanced the safety of the truck, moot points for me. St.