‘Ten hours work to replace a £3 seal’
Leaky BMW needed full strip-down
The failure of a small and seemingly insignificant part can often lead to a huge amount of headscratching and some pretty drastic bills to put things right that a few simple checks earlier in the process could have avoided.
A much-loved
BMW R nineT racer had been a regular through the workshop at Moto Cave Swindon, receiving much of its past pampering service work in their capable hands. So the customer quickly called upon the ‘The Cave’ to remedy a mysterious oil leak.
Mechanic Simon Chalmers and owner John Jefferies got on the case immediately. The leak was tiny, barely beyond a couple of drops once the bike was fully up to temperature, but with a fastidious owner keen to get it sorted, the boxer had to be in tip-top condition.
He said: “I set about stripping the bike and I knew pretty quickly that an oil seal had gone in the gearbox, but to get to it you’ve got to split the whole bike in half.”
After a substantial disassembly the bike was in bits, the subframe, swingarm and generally every single element of the BMW that extended beyond the clutch was stripped back, creating two monowheeled hunks of metal, exposing the gearbox and clutch housing for Simon to dig into and uncover the source of the leak.
“After hours of work for the full strip down, I noticed that the culprit was the rear main oil seal. It was a lot of work – around ten hours in total to then spend two minutes replacing a £3 seal. Well, it should’ve been £3 but it came in a BMW package, so it was more like £30 actually!
“It took a day-and-a-half to complete but we got it turned around and the customer was happy, that’s the main thing. We’d got to it before the clutch had been contaminated too and he had his bike back running good as new.”