R1100s - no drive

[AndyRob]

Went out for a ride this afternoon and was aware of a developing noise from under the seat which sounded like I was running over a lot of gravel.

Never had any issues before, the bike is well treated and ridden very gently all the time.

Before I got home the noise was getting steadily worse, I slowed down and started to get even more noise on a light/trailing throttle. Then, at the top of a hill within 200 yards from home I lost all drive and very luckily was able to freewheel back to base. At least I wasn't 50 miles from home as I was an hour earlier.

Anyway, it sounds like stripped splines. If I catch the revs right/gently, I can get a bit of drive before the slip/graunch/grating starts and drive stops.

How do I best begin to determine where the problem is? I've read that if it's gearbox splines then for a bike worth less than £2k yesterday it's probably going to breaker's heaven.

Andy

[AndyRob]

Having posted last night I've had the time to find that lots of people have documented this issue so, though it'd still be helpful to me to have a diagnostic checklist to identify my actual problem, here's a link to another (older) thread for anyone else looking for help on this issue.


viewtopic.php?t=13167&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

[eyore]

What a shame, commiserations. What mileage on it by the way?

[AndyRob]

What mileage on it by the way?

If you thought you'd be ok on your own low-miler I hate to say that mine has only 23,800 on the clock.

I bought it only 1000 miles ago and in all my years of having much less expensive bikes than a Beemer this was the first one to cost me anything significant. Typical.

I've not seen these mentioned anywhere else on this site but if you search for "BMW Service - Chris Harris" on Youtube he has put up loads of repair procedures, including one on an RT (which is much the same clutch/gearbox-wise on all the 1100, 1150 and 1200 bikes) with the same problem as mine but at less than 12k miles!