radiator fail

user 1343 · May 16, 2017

First post on the Forum.

2015 S1K Sport. About 8.5k miles over 18 months.

Coming back from a progressive, not spirited, ride and ... the temp maxes at over 140C, flashing on the panel.

Pull over, stop the engine. Bike dumps about 1/3 to 1/2 its coolant (my estimate). Let the bike cool, limp it home the last few miles. Turn off the engine at stoplights etc to keep the temp down; never showed above 98C.

BMW recovers the bike. I'm expecting a bad water pump or thermostat. But no.... "the radiator failed". Seriously?

Anyway, still under warranty and no hassles from BMW about it. Radiator has to come from Germany so that's 7-10 days (max), but it's a chance to do other stuff.

Has anyone else had a radiator failure? Don't see anything like this on the Forum.

cheers

alex · May 16, 2017

By fail did it get a rock through it?

BTW we have a policy of people posting in the Welcome Area first. Just to say hello. But I appreciate you're in a fix with the bike and want to talk about it straight away.

user 1343 · May 16, 2017

Just posted to Welcome Area. Sorry for the false start.

No, not a hole - I asked. I'll need to see the radiator to understand what happened. Maybe just a 1 in 10,000 fail in the component.

I was wondering if anyone else had an unexplained failure.

alex · May 16, 2017

Certainly the first I've heard of - but then we've only a subset of the owners world-wide.
BMW are pretty good about failures even out of warranty, when it's not expected (consumable). Glad you're getting sorted even if it's a pain to wait.

Oli · May 16, 2017

My 15 RR had the coolant temperature sensor fail quite recently, but haven't heard of the radiator failing, only if they've been punctured.

Glad it's all being sorted, hope you get your bike back very soon!

user 1343 · May 24, 2017

Update - BMW Park Lane (the service centre is in Battersea) says the radiator fail was 'unlucky' - haven't seen it before so they think it's just a bad component. I assume they buy the radiator from a third party so..... let's believe them.

Collected the bike this morning, and as usual it's a ton of fun. After the first 30 seconds of body position adjustment as I'd gotten used to the KTM Adventure (!)

Will scan the forum to see if anyone's going out on Sunday or Monday.

cheers