Final Drive Questions

[tdragger]

I just finished riding in the inaugural LDX Rally (little brother to the bi-annual Iron Butt Rally) where I covered 7,438 miles in 7 days of some hard riding.  When I loaded the Trophy for the drive home, I noticed a lot of something spread across the final drive.  I need some advice on whether I have a final drive failure in the works, or if it is just some extra blow-by, or a seal that is failing, whatever...  There are some very mechanically inclined folks on here and I hope someone can guide me as what to do next.

[janfmiller]

Looks oddly like ice..   

Is the exposed surface, or does anyplace, feel/look oily?

Looks like you rode through some kind of goop that adhered to the surface, and a bunch flaked off.

do the old shake test to see if there is any abnormal play in there rear wheel.  Check the level, then drain the oil and check for metal, chrome flakes == bad.. ( at least in the BMW world! ).

Not much chatter here about final drive failure.   Hope all is well!!!!

Or you can ride it and let it self-diagnose... 

[T800XC]

Looks more like the oil seal failure that I had on my Explorer. I don't know about on here, but it's well documented over at the Explroer forum.

Here's some notes and photos of mine from one of the threads, together with how I fixed it...

https://www.tiger-explorer.com/index.php/topic,18213.msg214366.html#msg214366

[tdragger]

That's what I am afraid of.  Your fix is beyond my skills, unfortunately. 

Ugh, clean it up and trade it in on a GT Explorer or buy a new final drive?

During the LDX Rally we had 2 or 3 Goldwings experience final drive failures and the BMWs have their history of failures.

[tdragger]

Hold it.  Would the final drive failure like this be covered under the RPM Extended Warranty? Mine's good through 2027.

[Coconut]

It does look like some sort of oil leak, slo carery out the checks already mentioned,
but check it really IS Final Drive Oil.....

There was a Member a few years ago who thought he had a serious leak,
which turned out to be a DOG peeing over his Trophy !   

[tdragger]

Originally Posted by Coconut

There was a Member a few years ago who thought he had a serious leak,
which turned out to be a DOG peeing over his Trophy !   

oh now that's funny.  I don't think it will be that situation.  However, it might be from me almost peeing myself when I passed within inches of an Elk's ass at 70 mph at 0200 in the morning. 

[Rick505]

My laissez-faire (not exactly the correct phrase but you get my point) attitude toward these sorts of things is to clean up the area, check the current fluid level and/or change it, and go ride.  If it helps with your concern keep an eye on the area for fluid in the future.  Could it have been overfilled and the heat and effort caused the excess fluid to build pressure and leak?