My GS Adventure turned 10 years old last year. The bike had been great and very reliable and I was at a crossroad.
The shocks were shot and I had to decide whether to invest $$ in new shocks for a ten year old bike or save up for a new one. In the end, I decided to buy a new set of Wilbers shocks.
Here is a pic of the new and old rear shocks.
I even bought a new mud guard to protect the new rear shock.
The new shocks were great and the bike handled better than ever. Then I started hearing a strange noise from the final drive but only upon light acceleration. I change the final drive fluid about every 10k miles and it has always been relatively clean. This time I got black oil with silver glitter.
Well that's not good.
I removed the final drive and opened it up to take a peek.
I suspected a bad pinion bearing but wasn't sure so I sent it out to be rebuilt.
I put it all back together and rode the snot out of it. Until I started getting a bad vibration. Great.
Bad front u-joint in the drive shaft. Here is what was left of the bearing.
But remember, BMW stands for "bring more wallet" so you can't just buy another one at Autozone. So I ended up buying a new aftermarket drive shaft instead of spending $1200 for one that had BMW stamped on it.
So the last year has been eventful but I love the bike and I have nearly 70,000 miles on it. I have never put 100,000 miles on a single bike and I'd like to accomplish that with this one. I'm in way to deep at this point to consider anything else. This is a pic from a few days ago.
The shocks were shot and I had to decide whether to invest $$ in new shocks for a ten year old bike or save up for a new one. In the end, I decided to buy a new set of Wilbers shocks.
Here is a pic of the new and old rear shocks.
I even bought a new mud guard to protect the new rear shock.
The new shocks were great and the bike handled better than ever. Then I started hearing a strange noise from the final drive but only upon light acceleration. I change the final drive fluid about every 10k miles and it has always been relatively clean. This time I got black oil with silver glitter.
Well that's not good.
I removed the final drive and opened it up to take a peek.
I suspected a bad pinion bearing but wasn't sure so I sent it out to be rebuilt.
I put it all back together and rode the snot out of it. Until I started getting a bad vibration. Great.
Bad front u-joint in the drive shaft. Here is what was left of the bearing.
But remember, BMW stands for "bring more wallet" so you can't just buy another one at Autozone. So I ended up buying a new aftermarket drive shaft instead of spending $1200 for one that had BMW stamped on it.
So the last year has been eventful but I love the bike and I have nearly 70,000 miles on it. I have never put 100,000 miles on a single bike and I'd like to accomplish that with this one. I'm in way to deep at this point to consider anything else. This is a pic from a few days ago.