I love my old BMW. It's a real pleasure to ride and gets more attention that any bike I've owned. But as much fun as it's been, it hasn't been very reliable. Here's a list of problems:
A carb began leaking the day I bought it new. The other soon followed. A Ducati salesman joked that he could tell Airhead riders by the fuel stains on their boots.
There were oil leaks, too. The first I noticed were the pushrod tube seals. Many owners call this 'weeping'.
The alternator failed.
A head gasket blew out.
The shift lever broke.
One of the saddlebag mounts developed a crack.
The transmission bearings wore out and had to be replaced.
The engine began to die whenever it rained. I heard this from other owners, and finally learned that early R100 coils tended to develop cracks in the case. Once I knew that it was an easy fix, but at around $200 those coils aren't cheap!
The turn signal switch stopped working. When I opened it for cleaning I was surprised that it was made in Japan!
The final drive became noisy then suddenly locked up. My guess is that a bearing race broke and caused the catastrophic damage shown in my earlier post.
Admittedly this is a 30 year old bike with over 59,000 miles, but others (non-BMW) I've owned from the same era have had far fewer problems. In my experience Honda's Goldwing platform has been more reliable than anything else I've owned. My '99 Valkyrie Interstate has only had 2 problems in nearly 100,000 miles. A choke cable broke, and the bolt that anchors the side stand spring snapped off. The Wing's reliability was a big factor in my purchase of an F6B over a K1600.
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