Leaking Rear Drive

[lbever]

The final drive on my Tenere has developed a small oil leak. The oil is dripping out the drain hole in the swing arm in front of the gear case. Have not torn it down because of the lack of parts, I am assuming that it is the one of the two seals or O ring on the front side is the culprit. The bummer is that both seals are not available from Yamaha USA. One is available as a direct ship from Japan and the other is not available even in Japan til December 15th. :'( It appears that both of the seals are unique to the Tenere and not used on any other models. The weather has turned cold here so not a big deal, luckily it did not happen in the middle of the riding season.
Unit is out of Warranty and I did not purchase the extended warranty so I will be doing the repair myself.

 

[nondairycreamer]

I believe this was determined and then reported in another thread that excess assembly lube will show up there. If others don't confirm this you can do a search. If you do have a real, honest seal failure be sure to post it on GSpot at Adventure Rider. They need something to gloat over.

 

[terrysig]

a quick tear down can see any problems with seals. i pulled my rear drive and could easly see a tear in the seal on the shaft side. warranty replaced both but you are right it did take a while for seals to come in.

 

[lbever]

It is not assembly grease, it is gear oil. Do not want to tear it down until I get the parts to fix it.

I would have to have a drive failure before the BMW crowd could gloat

 

[markjenn]

I would have to have a drive failure before the BMW crowd could gloat

To be fair, the vast majority of BMW "final drive failures" are also seal leaks.

- Mark

 

[justbob]

The BMW FD failures that I am familiar with are bearing failures that resulted in a seal leak.
The seal did not cause the bearing to fail, the bad bearing caused the seal to leak.

 

[3putt]

My 07 K1200GT lost tolerance at the rear axle splines to hub. Wheel would wobble more than a 1/2". Required new FD to fix as they are a matching pair. BMW dealer first tried replacing the hub, lasted 2 days and 100 miles. About $2000 warranty.

I'm done with BMW.

 

[Checkswrecks]

6 page (currently thread about this subject is here:
http://www.yamahasupertenere.com/index.php?topic=4652.0

 

[Tremor38]

To be fair, the vast majority of BMW "final drive failures" are also seal leaks.

- Mark

I would suggest you stop apologizing for shaft-driven Beemers until you've owned one. What people are reporting is real. The statisical significance means nothing when you're stranded somewhere, or get thrown from the bike due to a catastrophic failure.

 

[Rasher]

I would suggest you stop apologizing for shaft-driven Beemers until you've owned one. What people are reporting is real. The statisical significance means nothing when you're stranded somewhere, or get thrown from the bike due to a catastrophic failure.

Mine never went, but fear of it going, or gearbox failure (not common, but none too rare either) or ABS controller (fairly common and hugely expensive) and a myriad of other things (FPC / EWS blah, blah blah) ruined the fun of riding, and especially touring. I had plenty of "niggles" (£1.5k of repairs between 6000 and 18,000 miles) and would never trust a BMW for going beyond my own postcode ever again.

If easy to replace seals are occasionally required I think that is fine, the BMW issue was often a seal, but almost as common where bearing failures which could happen suddenly and were never a cheap fix, and often required a complete FD assembly. Even replacing the bearings was a specialised job requiring specialist tooling (BMW dealers can't rebuild the drives, which is why they alwasy want to replace the entire unit) A few places in the UK rebuild drives for about £400, but when doing that every 20k - 40k it would be cheaper and easier to run a chain driven bike.

So far the odd weeping seal, loose spoke and a weird (but avoidable) starting issue is all the collective have found, happy days ::008::

 

[Twisties]

To be fair, the vast majority of BMW "final drive failures" are also seal leaks.

- Mark

Ok, now that's funny!

Actually, the BMW FD's have multiple failure modes. One is seal failure. BMW reduced the amount of gear oil to use in the FD. Many believe this was to reduce the operating pressure inside the sealed FD unit. My completely anecdotal impression is that this has reduced the incidence of the seal failure mode. However, that mode did not typically result in a stranding, or a major repair. Just an annoyance. The several types of bearing failures, the separation of the hub and drive splines, the u-joint failures, and the drive shaft failures are where the real damage is.

 

[solarinsocal]

My ABS controller went out and required a $2000.00 replacement. Who needs ABS anyway!