Whats the story on the bmw enging failure i been hearing. i been reading a lot about it and not too sure. anyone wanna throw something in the pot pls do and im looking to buy one next year but a bit doubtfull now
Ask PJ 
He hasn’t has he?
Mine has managed to chew both it’s camshafts after 2 months and 2800 miles!!!
It’s been in the dealers for the last 2 weeks and I was told that it will be another 2 weeks before the parts turn up. The problem is that they don’t have any spares at the mo because all the parts they have are going into the pre sold bikes and because they are selling them quicker than they are building them makes a shortage. Looking at aftermarket camshafts at the mo to maybe give me more power seeing as I have to wait anyway 
At least they gave me an F800R to play on and not an ER5 like Ducati 
Mate that is shitty! Obviously they have a QC problem with the camshafts.
Any way what is it with you and high performance engines? 
What the 800R like?
Sorry to hear this, PJ; the curse of the early adopter. I hope it gets sorted soon.I had to laugh when I read about this in the S1000RR forum and one guy said he rode from full tank to fuel light, 80 miles in 30 minutes. When someone asked him where he found it safe to do 160+ mph uninterrupted and without slowing for half an hour, he responded “Germany, orificer. Between HestonServiceBerg and LeighDelamereDorf Autobahn 4 late on a Friday Nacht” :laugh: :hehe:
Looks like lots of riders without problems aren’t voting as they fear that might curse them, I can understand that.
You’d think this issue would have emerged while the engine was still on the test bed - when they redline it for hours on end to see which bits break first.
Perhaps the customers ARE the test bed.
More likely a manufacturing issue. Just unlucky on my part I guess. BMW don’t make the camshafts they just have them made for them so an issue there is to blame I would say.
Kind of looks like it doesn’t it? :ermm:I’m sure they wanted the S1000RR to compete with Ducati - but not on how quickly it could lunch it’s engine . . . :crazy: Hope everything is sorted with your new cams PJ.
'kin hell pj. maybe all the polish got in there?
how do you think they managed to get 190bhp from the bike?
Ah PJ, sorry to read this actually after the trouble you had with that Ducati… All you want is a working bike innit?? :D:D
I would suspect an oil feed problem to the top of the head, rather than cam shaft quality control.
Really unlucky PJ … sorry to hear this!
Sounds that way, not too dissimilar to the problems Aprilia were having with the con-rods on the RSV4’s when they were first released, it was traced back to a manufacturing fault with a batch of rods from a third party supplier.
So a bike that gets through cams quicker than tyres? Sounds familiar, have a poke around under the fairing & see if you can see “Honda” or “VF750” stamped on it anywhere…
It’s nothing new for a BMW to be launched onto the public with built in faults and all the test bed running and pre release testing ain’t necessarily going to show up those faults. I could list all the bits that got changed under warranty on my 1978 air head, but I’ll save you being bored.
All of the pre relese bikes were probably built by craftsmen, not knocked up on an assembly line by people working against the clock. All of those parts were probably small batch produced, in-house, and subject to absolute quality control rather than random sampling of bought in parts. And so it goes on.
These things happen when Eupopean manufacturers try to compete with the Japanese on price and don’t make everything in-house.
Ah yes the myth of the invincibility of Teutonic engineering. I know someone who bought one of those over sized Tonka toys that Charlie and Ewan took to half way to Bognor before they broke down. He said it was a great bike to ride from garage to garage. Final straw for him was when the shaft drive burst into flames.
Broken cam shafts would indicate a quality control problem, but PJ stated that the bike had chewed them … this is surely a gradual process caused by lack of oil.
Lack of oil to a camshaft would not be a first for loads of engine manufacturers over the years.
A well know race car engine manufacturer had a whole batch of cam failures. No, not an oil problem this time. Despite all the cam journals being match numbered, hen the guys fitting the cams fitted the bearing caps they decided to put them in the right place but the wrong way round.
Just the sort of thing that can happen on a production line when they’re working against the clock.