Let's make a list of big $ repairs

[rdsmith3]

My home's refrigerator has failed me twice in roughly the same time period causing total repair bills of $700.00

Excellent analogy! I am also on my 2nd refrigerator and 2nd microwave since I bought the R! And spent more replacing both than on my FD repair! They sure don't make them like they used to!

Wow, me too! The compressor went on our Amana refrigerator after about 18 mos. It was covered under warranty, but it is still an unacceptable failure.

[iowabeakster]

The compressor went on our Amana refrigerator

...Lousy Iowa workmanship...

I think this thread has strayed a bit...

[jeepinbanditrider]

Seeing threads like this makes me worry about owning a BMW sometimes lol.

But then I realize that if something breaks I'll figure out how to fix it. I'm pretty good a spinning wrenches myself

My last bike was a KLR650 and I only owned that for a year no maint. problems the way the bike rode just didn't work for me.

My bike before that was a 2000 Bandit 1200S and I still miss that bike to this day. I bought it with 2300 miles on the clock and when I sold it it was right at 50k miles. What did I replace that whole time?

Rear shock
Battery once
Tires
Oil
Filters


No other problems from the bike. It just hummed along and handeled great.

I've had no problems from the BMW so far. Doesn't seem like it's going to so far but I've owned it for less than a year so we'll see what happens. Like I said if it does I can deal with it short of the bike burning down to the ground knock on wood lol.

As for keeping meticulos (SP?) track of how much I spend on my hobbies (Motorcycle, Racing, Cars, Guns, ect) I would probably have a stroke if I did that. To me if you keep track of it like that it becomes more work than fun and it's counterproductive. If it makes me happy to do it then I'm not really concerned how much it costs, as long as I can pay my bills and take care of my kid it's worth every penny.

[scottybooj]

Ever since BMW (the Quandt family) took of BMW motorrad, it just seems that their philosophy of using early adopters as beta-testers seems to prevail. They did(and still do) it with their autos, repairing many under warranty, and then taking back the leases and selling them overseas. My BMW mechanic friends explicitly warned me NEVER to buy a first year or so release for a particular model.

What I don't like is that their have been quality control issues at play, cutting corners in some cases. Top that off with uber-expensive repairs and you get dissatisfaction.

BMW has worked quite hard to make their bikes and cars, less and less self-maintainable. That's just a fact. I too hope for a worry-free ownership.

I'm not at all trying to be a worry wart. I just want to figure out, to the best of my ability, if keeping the bike could result in a very expensive ownership experience or not.

[bikermeow]

BMW has worked quite hard to make their bikes and cars, less and less self-maintainable. That's just a fact. I too hope for a worry-free ownership.

I reckon that it is not just BMW but most makes. Cars nowadays have a service warning that could only be reset by the authorised dealer, to encourage the use of them.

My take is that the BMW is not expensive to maintain, so long as there are pre-emptive maintenance and care. When that is in place, then the BMW reliability will follow.

[Daryl.Stamp]

I'm over 42K w/ my '02; it had 9.6K on it in Aug '06 when I bought it.
My big expenses to date have been shocks, tires & dealer maintenance.
I do my own routine maintenance now (no clutch spline or FD teardown/inspection/re-assy) and just figured out how to mount my own tires last year. From what I understand; shocks are usually dead @24K on most bikes anyway and no matter what bike you get them for Ohlins & Wilbers are not cheap, but I'd definitely do it again.

I changed the fuel QD's, put in an Odyssey battery, bought a Battery Tender from the HD dealer, hard-wired a garage door opener, built a 5V power supply for the Garmin Quest & made a luggage rack.

I sometimes think about what might go wrong when we're on a trip, but not enough to keep me from leaving.
The one thing I think about sometimes is a clutch spline loss on the Interstate in heavy traffic in the far left lane ... that would really suck. Then I think about a new GS, GT, RT, RS; an ST1300, FJR or Concours; all really nice but none without faults of some kind.

[12bar1]

For what it's worth I traded my 04 with 26K on the clock in on an 08 Suzuki DL650 Vstrom about a year ago. The reason was I was in an accident where the entire back half of the R had to be replaced, in retrospect I should have insisted they total it. After the wreck and reading about all the clutch and FD issues I never really trusted the bike again. The final straw came when it started spewing gas from the fuel line QD's. I loved that bike and I still miss my roadster, it has to be one of the best looking bikes on the road but in all honesty my Strom does everything it did for far less $$, runs on regular and just about any shop can and will work on it if needed. I'm not knocking BMW, it just wasn't going to work out long term for me.

[owldaddy]

My 04 has been one of the good ones, no major problems. I did learn a lot from this board about the machine, and took the good advice available here, I may have managed to avoid some of the pitfalls of our machines by making the changes that needed to be made before they became an issue. I believe that 90% of these bikes run without major problems, saying that, I will be checking the wiring harness during the next "tank off" maintenance. I might avoid yet another problem. Oh, and I don't think mine is a POS. Lemons happen, but most of us are not owners of them. If you get one of those bikes that is a lemon, then it maybe time to dump it and look for something else. Therefore I would like to suggest to Mr. sweatmark that he remove the POS avatar (save it for the Ural board) and go back to using the last one he had, I liked that one a lot better