nielsm
Well-known member
My point isn’t to say that no bike will ever have an issue. There are always examples of where someone had an issue and the internet tends to amplify negative experiences so it appears to be widespread. in general BMW bikes are built well and it’s not unusual for > 200K miles if you keep up with maintenance.I'll give you a for instance: Every member of AZ Beemers that bought a K1600 when they came out had at least 1 water pump failure. One guy had 4 and bought a spare for trips as some dealers had issues getting them. My peeve with my RT is the throttle body pulleys. There are a few threads on the BMW Sport Touring forum on it. A lot of us put in complaints to the NHTSA about and some got calls from them, but nothing came of it. Those bikes are old now, but it's a hell of a way to cheap out. As far as the manuals go, they don't want us working on our own machines and probably would like us to trade up every 3-4 years. I know BMW cars are going to a subscription service on options. Want heated seats? Pay a monthly fee. That way they just build all the cars the same and have revenue continuously for options instead of pay once. I am surprised HD hasn't figured that one out. We only have one independent BMW shop in AZ. The others are chain types with high rent and everything that goes a long with it.
I fully agree on the manuals & it is a pet peeve of mine. It’s actually the dealers pushing for that, since they make most of their money on service. But, be friendly with the techs and you can get the torque values you need for most typical maintenance.
I don’t have as strong a reaction to pay to enable features as some others. It can be a benefit as you can choose to add a feature after you bought something and the simpler manufacturing reduces overall costs. If you only keep a vehicle for a short period, a subscription might be cheaper than buying the feature outright. For example, BMW heated seats are $18/month or $415 to permanently enable. If you use heated seats 1 month a year in Arizona and only keep the car 3 years, the subscription is only ~15% of the cost of buying it outright and you get to spread out payments. If I never used heated seats and thus never paid for it, but I sell the car to someone in a colder region, they can choose to add the feature as needed, thus increasing the market for my car than if the feature couldn’t be enabled. I don’t see an issue in having it as an option.