Monday, June 1, 2015

Unstoppable. Not

This happened back in January. Sorry for the late response. 

Unstoppable? Unstoppable. Unstoppable is the the marketing phrase or word used by BMW Motorrad to promote their motorcycles. Obviously, judging from the picture, such is not the case. Riding to work this past Wednesday I pulled away from a light and after shifting to second gear, the engine went to idle. Ok. Now what. No turn of the wrist would make the engine rev. Figuring that something in the throttle mechanism broke, I called roadside service and 4 hours later I was home. That's right. 4 hours. Luckily it was January and not July.

I disassembled the bike to get at the junction box for the throttle cables. Nothing broken there. I then got under the bike to look at the throttle pulleys and lo and behold, both were snapped off.

The offending part:

The best part was contacting BMW. The bike is out of warranty, but it's a weird problem to have, so I figured what the heck. They basically told me to have it repaired at a BMW dealer, send the receipt and they would let me know what they could do. Right. Over $1100 for the parts alone. That's right. The pulleys aren't sold separately, so the complete throttle body has to be replaced and that's X2, so at over $550 each, that's over $1100, plus labor, figure a couple hours billable. I found a pair of throttle bodies on eBay from a salvage with 20,000 miles on it for $250 plus shipping and included all the throttle linkage and fuel injection setup. The only other expense was the tool to remove the clamps on the throttle bodies and that was $35 shipped. So it was $300 total versus about $1400 at the dealer.

I was real sore at BMW for awhile and right about then gas prices tumbled so I've been driving my car to work. I just did a major service on the bike, so it's pretty much ready to go, although I have to bring it in for a recall on the rear wheel flange and it'll need a new tire in 1000 miles or so.

Life is good.

Thank you for reading this blog.