My First 2014 Problem (Final Drive oil Leak)

[MotoJunky]

I have a 2014 es and had the same leak problem when I hit the long triple at the local mx track and fell short......

































J/k.........





























No leaks after the jump......

 

[Don in Lodi]

A friend just paid 1900 plus labor for the dealer to replace his entire final drive, no rebuild this time. His first three squeaked through under warranty. This last one was too far outside the free zone. By the numbers that's one every 25,000 miles for his 100,000 mile bike. But in actuality the distances varied. Another friend had to have his rebuilt in South Dakota somewhere. He caught it very early, noisy but no failure. That's two of four friends, granted two are very new bikes... a 50% failure rate? What does four of them on one bike count as? That's just the small group of riders I have dinner with every once in a while. ???

::018::

 

[dirtsailor]

Use dat warrenty ::002::

 

[Big Blu]

Maybe I am missing what you are trying to say.
It looks like you were challenging justbob to show you the source of his data, as if the 2-3% figure might be incorrect. But then your links (which agree with others) provide the following numbers to support his 3% figure. By what BMW and Rick (WbW) provide:


14100 BMW US sales/458972 total US sales =
Accounting for ALL models, BMW had 3% share of the total US market.

The GS sold 30,000 units last year, world-wide. As I remember they sold about 2:1 to the Teneres.

My point is BMW has produced many many many more GS's then Yamaha has produced ST's so one should expect to see more failures.
Now a question for you, where can I find ST production numbers?

Paul

 

[Checkswrecks]

My point is BMW has produced many many many more GS's then Yamaha has produced ST's so one should expect to see more failures.
Now a question for you, where can I find ST production numbers?

Paul

The Tenere final drive is closely related to the design of those in the FJR, Voyager, VMax, all of the shaft Star motorcycles, etc. Mama Yama has been building variants of it for 30+ years, so there is more than enough history to compare reliability. While the Yamaha shaft drive will occasionally leak or lose seals, I can't think of any that have done the BMW hand grenade, including a couple of instances where people have lost the drain plug. As far as final drives, I just accept that they are a BMW potential failure point, just as dropping a Tenere on the fan. Of course have a final drive fail can be a LOT worse for your day and the following reliability chart comes to mind:

In answer to your question, none of the Japanese manufacturers publish model sales numbers and all closely guard those. When I've tried to chase those I've had best luck in going after tangent data, such as highest serial numbers in affected models. For example, maintenance publications, NHTSA/EPA type data, and recalls. It's a pain to find and not entirely accurate, so you need to get it from multiple sources and look for consistencies.


By memory, I think the last time we as a forum looked into comparative sales, the 2012 intro-year Tenere sold something like 1,800 US bikes and BMW was in the upper 2,000 GS's. Three model years later and in rough growth and proportions to current data, my own estimate is that current year Tenere production for the US market is in the low to mid 2,000s and the GS ought to be around the mid 3,000s.

 

[markjenn]

By memory, I think the last time we as a forum looked into comparative sales, the 2012 intro-year Tenere sold something like 1,800 US bikes and BMW was in the upper 2,000 GS's. Three model years later and in rough growth and proportions to current data, my own estimate is that current year Tenere production for the US market is in the low to mid 2,000s and the GS ought to be around the mid 3,000s.

I don't want to get into a whole lot of analysis here, but I think this overstates the relative numbers quite a bit.

BMW does publish its sales numbers and it sells about 125K motorcycles worldwide currently. Of this, the US market is typically reported to be about 12-13%, so figure US sales of 15K or so (which also matches up to figures BMW publishes for overall US sales). The R12GS and GSA is by far the best-selling bike in the US and I've read several places that 30-40% of US sales are this bike. So figure about 5K-6K R12GS bikes sold annually.

I've never seen hard data for Super Tenere sales, but 1800 for 2012 MY sounds about right based on VINs. The problem is that this number is non-representative sales of later years as there was the pent-up demand with a nearly year-long ordering period. My bet is that Yamaha is currently selling perhaps 1K S10's a year. I'd be interested if anyone has a serial VIN over 1K on either a 2013 or 2014.

- Mark

 

[Don in Lodi]

Don't forget the 2010-11 model year in other countries. We don't see their numbers vs failures, but I'd guess Yamaha is pretty good at this stuff by now.
It's all ratios anyway. The total number sold is pretty meaningless for failure rates. XX out of a thousand bikes sold is the same % regardless of the totals.

 

[Tremor38]

That is good that it is fixed.
This is why I opted for the YES warranty. That would be a free change under YES I believe. A seal SHOULD last longer than yours, but there are times when some piece of dirt, debris or bug gets in there and tears it up.

On the brands that "get bashed" it is rarely a seal related issue...yes, the seal goes bad, but only when the crown bearing turns to shrapnel and the wheel wobbles the seal to death...cant blame that seal... ::025::

BAHAHA! Big Blue, please pickup the white courtesy phone... Big Blue??

 

[Tremor38]

The majority of the issues I heard about were related to incorrect shim spacing (preload) of the main bearing. That's what was causing the bearing to fail.
I have heard people replace the bearing and not set it up correctly only to find that final drive failing shortly after again.

On Final Drives that are setup correctly, they last many thousands of miles. Something has to cause the bearing to fail.

Let's not kid ourselves - All bikes have their quirks. I love them all ;D ::001::

Yeah, a properly preloaded/shimed FD bearing lasts between 30 to 50k miles. BMW riders accept that as normal. S10 owners have a slightly different paradigm! 8)

 

[Koinz]

All I can say is that I ride with those Beemafiles all the time. Most have not had a problem and they have 100K, but there are several that have had issues and unfortunately they were far from home when it happened.
that's why I ride the S10

 

[greg the pole]

to get back on the leaky topic... :
my shaft seals went at 35xxxkm, my inner seals just packed it in at 43xxxkm.
Luckily it was a easy job, and more importantly I actually had the parts on hand.

My bike never, ever goes off road

 

[Big Blu]

Do I see the beginning of a trend here?

Pau

 

[Karson]

Do I see the beginning of a trend here?

Pau

Must not feed troll. Must not feed troll. Must not feed troll.

Statistically speaking, no this is not a trend.

There that was easy.