Actually, this is more like questions for the clutch masters out there. I just finished a 3,500 mile (give or take) round trip from Texas to Cali to visit family. I prepped well and had no problems with the bike...well, just one: the clutch. My past postings told of a problem with the shifting on my '06 GS12. After long runs on the highway, the clutch lever action would go soft and the lever would almost contact the grip before the clutch disengaged to allow shifting. After cooling down (I thought) the lever action would return to almost normal. What I did about it was to bleed the system and do the clutch hose anti-dip and relocation routine to remove the hose from the heat and prevent bubbles from collecting. Until the trip, I thought all was great. But after about 500 miles of high speed running on IH-10 between San Antonio and El Paso on the first day, I noticed that the problem had returned. However, it never got as bad as it had been before, and I made it to Cali without further degradation of the shifting action. The trip back was another matter entirely. The clutch lever action steadily got worse with each passing day of hard running on freeways and Interstates. As usual, a short wait of a few minutes or some simple driving around on city streets using the clutch would return the clutch action to almost normal. Strangely, no amount of pumping the lever helped. Long trips provide time to ponder things and this really bothers me. I learned that this was not related to heat, as I suspected in the past; the clutch lever action degraded noticeably after a long climb up the Grapevine in quite cold rain, and I had several long runs through thunderstorms after which the clutch lever action was soft and almost wouldn't disengage the clutch. I learned that the speed of the run made no difference as long as they were long distance runs. I also learned that no matter how bad the the clutch lever action got, it usually returned to some semblance of normal while driving around in traffic on city streets. Maybe jerky or notchy, but at least I could change gears. Finally, I wondered if there was air still in the lines and I was pushing foam through the clutch line with barely enough pressure to engage the clutch. But if this was the case, why would the clutch lever action return to "normal" after only a few minutes of sitting, or by simply driving around in traffic? And why wouldn't pumping the clutch lever do anything to make it shift better? So when I got home I bled the system again. And I found that, basically, I was pushing foam through the hose, so much so that the fluid that I use which is a deep blue, looked greenish with all the air bubbles. So I bled a lot of fluid through, but this time I "burped" the line when I finished and got a bunch of bubbles in the reservoir. I may bleed the line again tomorrow, but I'm not believing I fixed the problem. Any thoughts from the more clutchly inclined? Top three guesses? Bueller?
is this a 1200 ? Did you mix the different types of clutch fluid ? That causes the symptoms you have. The new 1200 clutch fluid is red. This is also not to be mixed with the earlier green or blue fluid.
I've bled a few, but never used anything but the BMW fluid. Is there any reason you can't flush out the dissimilar color with a new type? Any harm to the seals, is it just a fluid incompatibility issue? Jim PS I am guessing that so long as you flush all the old out, it wouldn't be an issue. PPS It does seem odd that the fluids, basically oils, would be incompatible.
I was very mindful of completely flushing out the old green colored fluid when I put the new Magura Blue Blood in. I've now completely replaced the fluid twice. And it's important to know that this problem was happening before I changed the fluid that was originally in the bike with Magura Blue Blood. So the soft clutch almost touching the grip happened with the original BMW clutch fluid, which was green. A question: was/is there a reason for BMW to now specify the red fluid rather than the old green or blue, besides a change in supplier? I'm hoping to not start a clutch fluid flame war, but, like Jim, I don't see that mixing mineral oils would cause air to suddenly appear in the line -- and it was air, not a sludge that one would think would result from mixing immiscible oils. There may be a difference in weight between the old and the new fluids, but we mix dino weights all of the time -- even synthetic and dino together -- without harm or adverse chemical reactions. The only times I've heard that it isn't good to mix fluids is various concoctions of DOT brake fluid, and anti-freeze formulations. When I did research on acquiring clutch fluid, I did a lot of web searching regarding Vitamol, Magura Blue Blood, and Finish Line disc brake fluid (for bicycles). Basically these mineral oils seem to be heavily guarded secrets by the manufacturer -- if indeed there is more than one manufacturer. Some have opined that Magura Blue Blood is actually Vitamol. I'm not willing to go there for now, but they seem strangely similar, and there is practically no information on either on the web. Oh, there is a European site that lists the toxicity and composition of various chemicals used in industry, and Vitamol is listed, but Magura isn't. I read somewhere -- either an Aussie site or a South American site -- that the red clutch fluid BMW specifies is actually Finish Line red mineral oil used primarily in bicycle disc brakes. I remember one poster saying that the BMW dealer where he lives got delivered a bunch of GSes but without clutch fluid installed. So the dealer went out and bought a bunch of Finish Line red and put it in because, the posters were told, it is the same thing. And seeing as Magura built the brake system for BMW, I'm wondering if there isn't a natural compatibility between their hardware and their oils. After all, when Magura builds and tests their hydraulic clutches, it seems natural that they would specify their mineral oil to test them, doesn't it? Again, my opinions only. I am comfortable that I got all of the old fluid out of the clutch line. I am not confident that I got all of the air out. And I am still wondering why the problem appeared after long runs on the highway, when the bike worked perfectly at highway speeds on shorter runs for months before the long trip.
I used Magura or Silkolene or something that wasn't the BMW space fluids in my K1200R's clutch hydraulics. It appeared to cause the master cylinder seal to leak but then it stopped. ?.
Conversations about the R12GS clutch are going on all around the country. Here's one by a friend of mine, mikec, with whom I rode in California last month to Death Valley (DV). I flew out and back, but mike rode his '09 GS out and back. Here's mike's account. 'The clutch got "mushy" during the Saturday portion of the DV ride but, when I left Sunday morning, it was okay. By the time I got to Tucson that afternoon, I could pull it halfway to the handlebar before it would engage. On Monday, I got to Deming, NM and realized it was history when I pulled off the interstate and geared down. After refueling, I climbed into the saddle, put it in first, rocked it down and I was off to El Paso. I shut it down there because hotels, bars and the basics of life were in easy reach. To make a long story short, I exhausted all efforts with towing services and called Barnett's Harley-Davidson. As luck would have it, they had a truck going to San Antonio the next morning. After getting the proper amount of grief for not being on an H-D, the service manager said, "Hey, man, if you're on two wheels, we'll try to help you out." Anyway, I finally got it home so all's well.' That sounds like similar symptoms. Well, I liked my rented GS so much on the DV trip that I came home and traded for one, also an '09. I haven't had mushy clutch issues or a change in the friction point on the lever, but the bike does shudder when starting from a stop unless I rev it up and really slip the clutch. I took the bike in for its first service, and the service guy said "Oh yeah, BMW really has a bad batch there." Then he tells me about this guy whose GS clutch had crapped out "out west"; I figure that was mike. The Service Mgr said it could have been prevented by changing the slave cylinder, but BMW is not willing to do that preventatively yet. Great.
Clutch Slave cylinder Same problems you had with one exception, mine would squeal like a pig when it was cold. Otherwise soft lever the works. Got a used one from Beemerboneyard problem solved. Edit: Flush the system with denatured alcohol after fitting the new slave cylinder.
Yeah, I thought it was the slave cylinder at first, but couldn't figure out how a bad slave could inject so much air into the system without a leak. I would have noticed the fluid drop if it leaked. There was none. And the clutch doesn't slip. Plus there are numerous postings on the UKGSer website about the dealer slapping a new slave in and calling it good, then the problem returns. I've since bled/burped the system again and continue to get an occasional fine rise of bubbles into the master reservoir. Man, this system is a bitch to bleed. Once bled, the clutch performs really well. It's just after a long run without using it that the symptoms appear. Hence my question to the clutch guys out there. Besides the slave, what else could be causing this problem, and how? As regards the squealing, that does indeed sound like the bearing on the slave cylinder. I'm suspecting that you may have had two problems, and the slave swap out solved both of them -- the sound and the lever softness. Because I don't have the squealing, and because a bleed makes everything work very smoothly, I'm thinking that I may have a master cylinder that slowly infuses air into the system with no apparent leaks. I'm just not sure of how riding long distances could exacerbate the situation. Actually, the whole clutch system is pretty simple, and there aren't a whole lot of things it could be. But because my bike is out of warranty, I can't afford a lot of experimentation in order to find a fix. I have to know I'm solving the problem when I purchase something. The whole vagueness of this issue really bugs me.
