Video of Driveshaft failure on R1200 ... this one on an RS

[Pyrrho]

I visited my dealer and asked the service manager about all this cardan shaft business. Here's what I learned:

• It wasn't a service bulletin, it was an addendum to a revised set of documentation covering service procedures that were released in January of this year regarding premature input shaft failures on the GSes.
  
• BMW isn't recommending shaft inspection, they're recommending use of their special tool and procedure to determine if the shaft requires replacement (see below).
  
• As I brought my bike in for service while still under warranty and BMW had no record of my bike being tested yet, they performed the test under warranty without asking (mine passed). If it was out of warranty or had already been tested, I would have to ask for it, and pay for 1.5 hr of service to perform the test.
  
• BMW will cover shaft replacement within the first 30K miles if the shaft fails, once per bike if out of warranty.
  

My dealer has a new service manager who seems far more engaged and personable than the previous. He took me in the back, introduced me to the service tech who performed my recent 24K service. They pulled the box with the shaft measurement kit off a shelf, took it out and showed me how it worked. The rear wheel is removed and a large thin steel disk roughly the diameter of a wheel rim is attached. On the perimeter of the disk are small slots similar to what you'd see on an ABS ring. Another piece is fitted to the rear hub that has a BMW ABS wheel sensor on it and that's connected to a computer running a special diagnostics program, that instructs them to run the rear wheel at specific speeds. The sensor is looking for harmonic resonances that would produce detectable judder in wheel rotation speed. No judder, no shaft issue, says BMW.

I was told under no circumstance would these types of shaft failures be sudden. I'd feel a vibration in the swingarm progressively worsen until I knew something was wrong and it needed to be looked at. While BMW no longer refers to their paralever system as maintenance free, they still have not introduced any spline or U-joint inspection or lubing procedures, just the new pass/fail resonance test.

As an aside of possible interest, I was also told a little more of the behind the scenes surrounding those shaft replacements earlier this year. Apparently it was a big mess. The dealers weren't given any heads up prior. The testing kits were late getting out to dealers. Some US dealers got a jump on things and ordered over a hundred cardan shafts per dealership just so they'd have inventory; which left a lot of other dealerships with service departments full of bikes and angry customers waiting on parts. After that, what originally was a stop sale order and official safety recall, turned into a service bulletin. They wouldn't say why directly, but the implication is clear it was a CYA move by BMW NA to stop pissing off customers and dealers.