Intermediate shaft bearing failure

Been meaning to post this for ages. Was in France this summer with Stolzy. Both of us on 1150 GSAs. Noise emanating from gearbox area but all working fine. Called in at BWW dealer in Besancon who took a listen and reckoned it would get me home OK and wasn't a bearing. It was much more of a rattle than a rumble. Cut a long story short involving breakdown 40 miles form base, strong smell of disintegrating clutch, relay at 1.00am, hire cars and then about 3 weeks to get the bike back to UK (AA relay cocked up!) got it delivered to Steptoe. Whole thing seized up and what we expected was a completely shot gearbox turned out to be the bearing on input end of the intermediate shaft. Fortunately ring on the fly wheel and everything else OK. Steptoe done brilliant job sorting it out and looking forward to meeting the man himself when I pick it up ASAP and ride it back to Herefordshire.
Bike is 4 years old has only done 26k miles, dealer serviced (suspect I may be giving this job to Steptoe from now on). Guess its just bad luck but anyone else had similar?
PS Not a nice feeling when you're riding along, change down to 5th and the whole thing locks up when you let the clutch out!

Bump

Quick bump for this - I was there when it happened - be interesting to know how common a problem this is.

think mine has just gone at 29k in france funny enough still out there though

Mine went at 35k, and happens every 15-20k.

Imput shaft bearing failure

My 1150s input shaft bearing disintegrated recently. It was a fairly quiet affair, only noticed when bits of it wedged the bike in 5th gear. Problem was I was 500 miles south of Darwin, Australia ! 2001 standard GS, 60,000 miles on the clock (100,000kms). Had got 10,000 miles around Oz before it happened, and was still on the same rear tyre (Anakee2)
A month previous the drive shaft rubber slipped/failed. Bad luck ,or common traits of the older GS ?

Mine gearbox was rumbling horribly at 120,000km and getting progressively worse, pull in the clutch noise disapears so I figured gearbox bearing... post here

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?t=296561

The rear intermediate bearing was bad but I replaced all of them, total cost be about GBP 30, now she is smooth as a

Ancient thread resurrection, but does anyone know why the bearing on the input side of the intermediate shaft (r1150gs) fail in such a spectacular manner punching out a hole in the casing where the bearing sits, reason I ask is that on my old GS about 18 months after I sold it the second owner managed to destroy the box and the recently fitted clutch.

The bike was one of the first production batch and I wonder if there were modifications to prevent this on later bikes , I rode later twin sparks and the gearbox was always much better than my own bike. Reason I ask is that I am going to look at a couple of r1150gs's and wonder if the issues continued latter into the production run

if in doubt , have them all done , i've got 135k on mine, all bearings in box done @ 86k

Neil W said:

Ancient thread resurrection, but does anyone know why the bearing on the input side of the intermediate shaft (r1150gs) fail in such a spectacular manner punching out a hole in the casing where the bearing sits,

Click to expand...

To be straight with you Its a piece of string thing

had they noticed more noise etc etc ??

A fella I know rode back from the Alps to N Ireland with the Input bearing completely bolloxed and chewing up the casing

I suggest LACK of Mechanical sympathy and a "Ride it on! It will be fine!" attitude !

The then owner knew it had been my bike and we had a look at it ,a slight knocking noise from the box at tickover so we dropped the oil ... no debris or crap in the oil, so refilled the box with new oil and I told him to take it easy but three days later it went KABOOM. He got a used box and I fitted it for him and as far as I am aware it is still running on the same box 10 years later .

As said it was a very early R1150 GS (113th off the production line) and I bought it in 2002 with 2900 miles on the clock and the gearchange was always very clunky and needed slow deliberate changes