BMW enhances customer satisfaction with their new driveshaft maintenance strategy

[Grumpy Goat]

I asked the service manager how they test. He said BMW sent them a big device. I'm not sure I got it exactly, but he said something like "we remove the rear wheel and attach a weight, then we run it [not sure if the machine or the bike], we transmit the results to BMW electronically, who then send back a green check (good) or a red X (bad)".
Mine got the red X so they replaced the driveshaft. The whole process took about 2 hours.
I did not think to ask if it was vibrating because of bad U joints, because the shaft itself is out of balance, or something else. Someone else please ask this when it happens to you.

Sounds like shaft whirling. Something that is checked for in ship propulsion shaft design. In this case the transverse displacement would cause extra loads on the yokes of the universal joints which could be the cause of the failures. 

Would be interesting to see what they would do of the driveshaft passed given the new maintenance schedule and commitment to replace every 36k. I hope they would be replacing every 36k driveway miles regardless of test result. Or maybe they would not test at the 36k miles mark … just replace, testing only at the 12k mile inspections.