I know I shouldn't bite...
There will always be some engine failures. That's what manufacturing tolerances are about- acceptable losses. And I do offer sympathy for those owners who have experienced this. However until the S1 proves to be the unreliable beast that some people are describing it as, I'll consider it to be 'within standard parameters'. Of course there will be more failures. As long as they keep building them there has to be a percentage of failure. That's normal and expected. And of course I expect that we will hear about each and every one of them right here
The following comments are not based upon my personal bias of owning an S1. For the doubters/pessimists; do some scientific research to substantiate your claims of widespread 'engine failure' (aka the sky is falling).
The facts as I am aware of:
1. BMW tested this engine for almost 3 years prior to mass production. They have been building 4 cylinder engines for decades. The S1 engine is really quite unexceptional apart from the finger followers- and they have been thoroughly tested in F1 competition. BMW provided many pre-production bikes to testers to thrash and iron out the bugs. I therefore consider the S1 to be first-gen but actually already a few years in the making. It's a proven thing.
“We had to produce more than 100 S1000RRs for homologation in December 2008 and into January 2009. But we knew with this bike that quality control was going to be a very high target for us.
“So then we produced 300 examples of S1000RR and asked BMW employees to ride them. They had to sign a contract with us not to
tell anyone about the bikes and to just ride and ride them.
“These riders have covered more than one million kilometres (625,000
miles) between February this year and the recent start of production
of customer bikes. None of the 300 bikes will be going to the customer
or elsewhere, and once these preproduction machines have been
finished with at the press launch they will be destroyed and recycled.
“We have done the utmost to ensure quality of the S1000RR.”
2. The S1 has exemplified itself in 24 hr endurance racing:
"The S 1000 RR ran perfectly right throughout the day and night, and by the time the 2009 Bol d’Or finished at just after three o’clock on the Sunday afternoon, the BMW riders had completed 766 laps of the circuit at an average speed of 140.67 km/h. Despite the intense heat, which had caused problems for many other machines (25 per cent of the teams failed to finish the race), the only problem that Gerhard and his teammates suffered was brake fade."
“In truth, we didn’t know what to expect as it often rains at the Bol d’Or but this year was unusually warm, so many of the teams were having problems with engine cooling and brake pad wear."
3. BMW has an international reputation to maintain. They don't do things by half. If there are problems, we will hear about them. Recalls will follow. The S1 is currently way ahead of Harley, Toyota, Aprilia to name but a few. The engine design is not in dispute. The authenticated low percentage of engine failures are in all likelihood based upon faulty assembly and/or installation of faulty components. That's par for the course. Big deal. The doubters need to tell me something beyond this.
4. The data collected at this website is not following any statistical methdology. It's a collection of grievances, and then some value-adding along the lines of "someone I work with heard from a friend of theirs that their cousin's S1000RR..."
Ok, I'm done. I'm not into conspiracy theories nor spreading unsubstantiated gossip. The world is round, man did land on the moon, Jim Morrison is dead, and I'm off to clock up many more kms on the S1. See you in the twisty stuff.
Some perspective upon 'engine failure'
WTF?
Linear Mode
