2011 bmw g 650 gs fork failure

Just wow, crazy. Lawyer up.
I don't believe you should have to put up any money up front with a lawyer should he/she decide to take the case.
They usually know if they can win the case before they take it on.
Hobble to your attorneys office!

Nope, no spring should be visable there, whats in there is the damper rod and the ally spacer at the bottom there is a small rebound spring in that section but its trapped between the inner and outer fork so also not visable. The main Spring sits on top of the damper rod in these forks.

I'm betting the cause of the bent axle is the accident caused by the fork leg letting go and nothing else. the design of those legs is not easy to see with the picture, AntiqueWidow could you compare your forks with the other posted in the thread to identify weahter yours are of the early or later design?

Glad i ditched those forks now. Hope you heal well AntiqueWidow

not fishy to me, I've seen catastrophic failure plenty of times operating heavy equipment over 25 years.


there are just too many identical events to smell fish.

Forks typically don’t break on impact, they bend.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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It’s all speculation from us Interwebs folk, but I was an insurance adjuster handling motorcycle claims for the largest insurer of motorcycles in the US, ASE certified in damage analysis, blah, blah, and my experience has been that if this damage is from an impact the forks will have an obvious bend/bow in them.<o></o>
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There aren’t enough detailed photos for me to make a determination/conclusion. Based on what the OP contends, and if there isn’t a bend in the forks to make me think otherwise, (if I were still an adjuster) I’d have a forensic engineer/lab looking at those forks.<o></o>

uggh, ive got a 2011 g650gs, even if my forks never fail it is now going to be the first thing i think about every time i sit on it. so im going to the ducati dealer tomorrow. is it possible the bent axle was from shipping? strapping the bike down, or are they boxed? i dont know how motorcycles are shipped. hope your felling better antiquewidow.

First, certainly glad that you are okay antiquewidow. Second, I can't believe this has happened on the new design fork slider. Third, I'm ticked that I spent hard earned $$ on new sliders proactively for my '02, just to be on the safe side - now who knows

Take good care and make sure BMW is taken to the cleaners on this one

Agree with the "one time" part, but we must be careful with the word "overload". From the obvious lack of distortion/stretching, etc. at the fracture, it is a brittle fracture for sure.

But an overload has to be related to something, e.g., design loads or an overload for the condition of the metal/part. If a given part has a design limit of X, there is/should be a factor of safety that is applied. For steel lifting cables, the factor of safety is 5. A cable rated for a safe working load of 1,000 lb. must be able to withstand a load of 5,000 lb.

A metallurgical overload is different from a design one. A part may be manufactured way too thin by error, such that a full design load would be an overload. But a metallurgical overload condition does not consider what the design load/proof load is.

There are brittle fractures, ductile fractures, fatigue fractures, stress corrosion fractures, corrosion fatigue fractures, etc. Overload fractures, also called gross overload fractures, are either ductile or brittle, or some combination of each. So far the visual evidence of these latest forks indicates a brittle overload fracture. It means that for whatever reason, the applied load/stress exceeded the material's ability to withstand it.

Some of the factors which can cause an overload fracture include things which concentrate stresses, such as threads, holes, casting porosity, excessive surface roughness, and other casting problems.

In a tough material, such as nuke submarine hulls and nuke power reactor pressure vessels, an overload fracture usually involves a lot of physical distortion, bending, stretching, etc., and the actual fracture mode is known as shear. In a brittle material, the mode is not shear, but is cleavage right thru the individual grains of metal, along certain atomic planes. There is little or no physical distortion involved.

Both of these fracture modes are known as transgranular (thru the grain), while fractures involving hydrogen are usually intergranular (between the grains)--almost certainly not the case for these forks.

So, what we appear to have is a one-time, brittle overload fracture, but of course that does not explain why it occurred. Did a small bump in the road raise the local stress at some casting defect beyond a critical crack-initiation level? A tough material would likely be able to handle high local stresses because it plastically yields a bit, whereas a brittle material could not yield. When a critical stress level is reached in a brittle material, sudden fracture occurs. The speed of such fractures has been estimated at a mile per second in long steel pipelines when the temperature decreased below the tough/brittle transition temp.--aka ductile/brittle trans. temp.

Alum. doesn't have steel-like transition temps., so the riding temp. isn't an issue here.

BTW, finished the camping trip--too many bugs, including biting horse flies. Tried OFF!, a little help but not enough. Guess I'm getting soft--but NOT brittle!

Whew, this is shocking. When I first saw this thread yesterday, I said "ah, newbie, dumped the bike", but the photos tell a different story. That fracture is incomprehensible. So mum's the word for you, antiquewidow we'll find out more when the legal dust settles.

Sorry that I doubted.

But don't let this deter you-- motorbiking is fun...

Fork breaks at one end, wheel veers sideways, puts enormous forces on the axle, bends axle.

Don't see any reason to assume the axle was bent to start with here.

Pete

Just trying to explore what happened here.

It looks like the axle broke away from the right hand fork, but as there was not total collapse it appears as if the other fork was capable (for a short time) of supporting all the weight without breaking. This may be a small consolation in terms of design.

The settlement of the remaining fork leg and random nature of the steering was obviously enough to tip the rider off.

This sucks, that it is happening again, but duly note that the MAX BMW parts fiche has no listings for the front suspension fork parts. No part numbers, no nothing.



http://www.maxbmwmotorcycles.com/fiche/DiagramsMain.aspx?vid=53253&rnd=03252011


No pictures of the fork apart, or any showing the spring. No part numbers for anything related to the part of concern.

Huh.

Based on no more information than given, with the picture of the fork broken part/failure, the NTSB should force BMW to do an immediate investigation and potential recall of all models using that part.

This is the scariest thing I've seen in a long time in so far as new motorcycle part failure.

This will cause death and injury to someone... our first victim was relatively lucky.

Covering this under warranty is not good enough.... any suspect parts need to be found and destroyed.

NTSB is more of a planes & trains sort of agency.


You're thinking of: National Highway Traffic Safety Admin (NHTSA) who have already kissed BMWs buttocks.

http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/defects

If this had happened to one airplane, the fleet would be grounded until the fault was found.

You are right, I was thinking NHTSA but I am much more comfortable with the FAA and NTSB.

Antiquewidow

Glad your fork failure didn't cause more serious injuries to you. But even though it's been three days since it happened, i think you should go to the hospital and get thoroughly checked out. Back and neck injuries especially are nothing to take lightly.

I remember that thread, scarey stuff. I thought that this problem would have been fixed by now. but then from my experience with BMW they aren't big on living up to their problems.

It clearly looks like a bad casting. If it was just a bad design they would be braking right and left.

As others have said get a good lawyer. Do it for the sake of all BMW riders, its the only thing that will make them fix the problem.

I didn't see this mentioned...

I'm not a lawyer, and I don't play one on TV...but...

There was a mention of an ER having to do with a cigarette. There was no mention of an ER visit in the OP. I'm not sure it happened.

IF you have not been to a medical facility, my $.02 is to get to one asap. Take lot'sa pics of everything..every road rash mark..every swollen part..and keep the clothes you had on at the time...UNwashed!

Get a copy of the doc's dictation on your visit. That dictation will (damn better should!) be explicit in the detail of every injury. There will be nothing of this sort: 'Patient fell off her bike..got kind'a scraped up/banged up.'

If there is NOT an explicit, detailed account of the damage...get to another doc immediately.

If the doc says records are not transcribed anymore, keep digging. Your doc/the ER doc may use voice recognition in the EMR (electronic medical record) process, but there is a medical record with a detailed account of your injuries.

GET IT! Make absolutely sure everything in it is correct..AND that everything IS in it.

..and every other similar record pertaining to follow-up visits for this accident.

Keeping a diary/log about it wouldn't be a bad idea. Two-three years from now, nothing will beat a daily log with inputs like: 'This is the fifth day I've awakened with a severe headache. Same as the ealier four days since the BMW fell apart.'


Absolutely beats (same time frame):

'What other injuries did you have?'

'I had a headache for awhile after the bike fell apart!.'

'For how long?'

'Awhile.'


Hope you heal well..in body and spirit.


Get back on that horse (OK...some OTHER horse) and ride!

I guess that idiot has some dirt on the boss or something, because he should have been fired years ago... He's also apparently a consistent idiot, because the shape of the eventual failure is always the same.