Can I have a great big slice of that humble pie please ?

Paul S said:

Chain drive is the future - far better than these high maintenance shaft drives

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Alan R said:

to add a rich sauce to your slice of pie it would be entertaining for the collective if you could re post some of your more red faced spluttering denunciations of spline greasing. You know the ones (nearly all of them) mentioning shaft explosions etc. Your almost evangelical denial was extremely funny at the time. I hope, without a hint of schadenfreude, that you are successful with your goodwill claim from BMW.
Alan R

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knutk said:

I know lots of (former) happy owners of the 1150, but I think the pink cloud is blocking the vision of all the final drives that experienced bearing failure.
To be honest, even as fine as the 1150 was, the rate of failed rear drives due to bearing failure was higher rhan the current drives, even when we include the corrosion issue...

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Onahi said:

It was the early 2004/5 1200's that had the final drive issues.

Not the 1150.

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leadfarmer said:

Watch a couple of YouTube videos to get the gist but don’t forget there are some muppets on there !

Here’s what I did:

Pop it on the center stand, remove the spray guard from theFD and take the back wheel off, mine comes off without moving the silencer, I put a bungee from the front wheel to the stand for security

Take the ABS sensor out of the back of the final drive, I think it was a T25, I made a bung out of packing foam to stick in the hole so that the FD oil doesn’t run out when you drop the FD (I had changed mine recently)

Unclip the ABS sensor cable and remove the two bolts holding the rear caliper on, I cable tied the caliper to the panier frame to hold it out of the way

Remove the bolt from the paralever link bar, I supported the FD with an empty box

Gently lower the FD and unclip the front of the boot as you do so, as it opens up you can hold the UJ yolk to make sure you don’t pull the shaft off the gearbox end, this shouldn’t happen normally as it’s circlipped on the output shaft

The yolk should just slide off, it’s not circlipped, and the FD will just hang down

Clean and grease the splines as you wish, I used Facom lithium grease, then lift the FD back up

You can get your fingers in to hold the yolk in position on the end of the splines and wiggle the brake disk to align them if necessary, mine popped on easily in a couple of seconds (some YouTubers use a piece of wire to hold the yolk up but you can’t change the angle that way so I’d recommend using your fingers)

Once the yolk is on the splines close the FD and clip the boot back into position, I put just a light smear of lithium grease on the sealing face

Put the bolt back in the paralever link with a bit of thread locker, blue loctite in my case, torque up to 56 NM

Put the caliper back on, again thread lock on the bolts and torque up to 24 NM (pump your brake pedal in case you’ve pushed the pads back)

Clip the ABS sensor cable back in place and put the sensor back in the FD, torque setting for the screw is 8 NM but I just nipped it up fairly tight by hand

Put the wheel back on, tighten the bolts in diagonally opposite sequence and torque up to 60 NM

Put the spray guard back on, thread lock on the screws and torque up to 8 NM

Job done shouldn’t ever need doing again in reality

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batman1 said:

Nice tutorial Leadfarmer, thanks for taking the trouble to write it.

If you remember my recent post I’d been priced £40 to have mine done at the same time as my service and although the dealer had the job listed on the worksheet the technician suggested that I should leave it until the next service as he thought it would be fine on a two year old bike, so I took his advice and we left it until next service.
However after reading your tutorial I’m gonna pop into the garage one of these winters nights and do it myself, it the grease a special order, if yes where do I get it or will any reasonably sticky grease do as it’s to stop corrosion rather than aid lubrication?

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Onahi said:

Thanks for all the input here Leadfarmer. It is appreciated

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Riktus said:

Just to add to Leadfarmers post:

When you have taken the ABS sensor out and secured it out of the way - block the hole left behind with an Ear Plug to stop the oil coming out it saves you draining down the oil in the final drive (unless its due a change - but the oil change is part of the std BMW service schedule so if you are doing it in winter this might be outside of the cycle).

Rik

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richtel said:

What's the verdict about removing the shaft from the front to lube those splines? Does it make for a pig of a job to get the shaft back into the gearbox?

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