Recalled snowflakes... Return em or ride em?

[Deleted User 287]

I wonder if I should stop wondering about things too much?

"Ride em like you stole em!" as some here like to say. And have a good life insurance policy if you believe in such things.

[Jean]

ME109, If what you said in the first lines was OK, I doubt they would have redesigned the wheel.
A lot of things have been redesigned to be lighter and more econmical of material with catastophic results. Casting design takes more into account than "how much material"...the process itself is a major player in forming a part. BMW wheels aren't the only thing that has fallen to the notion that "less is better" where material is concerned.
There are some rather old-basic engineering and process practices that have apparently been forgotten.

[vanzen]

As far as wheels and rolling down the road ...
IMO ...
The process ( of making a wheel, i.e. manufacturing process & casting technique ) plays an insignificant role
relative to the advances in design & engineering:
understanding of the forces that affect a motorcycle wheel ( engineering )
and that part played by alloy development ( metallurgy ).
Both have made mistakes, but both have progressed with time ...

TIME ?

Do keep in mind that these flakes represent "brand-new" cast wheel technology ...
The flake represented state of the art market stuff –––––––30+ years ago !

Today, flakes are nothing more and nothing less than an extremely heavy and antiquated cast wheel.
If you have a problem with that –
put on your thinking cap and head to the garage,
or buy a NEW bike ...

[grant81rs]

Had mine done a couple years back in melbourne, the BMW dealer insisted on seeing the bike (250kms round trip), no wheel only, but the bike in person, wheel number to match frame number..... but that was no big deal as it was a day away from the workshop & a nice ride YIPPEE!!.

Then they were only going to pay for the new wheel...bearings, labour and whatever else was on my back, but thanks to SteveD and his copies of original BMW documents about the "recall" that I emailed thru to them they came to the party and replaced the whole lot FREE

I love telling the Harley crowd that one

[Jean]

Vanzen: "The flake represented state of the art market stuff "
EACTLY what I was getting at.
Too much ART, not enough process engineering (even for the time.)
I was doing machine design at that time...I saw a lot of garbage.
Lots of ART, Not much of anything else!!
Yep. Those wheels (even the "improved" ones) are heavy and have other flaws such as not always being reliable for holding air if you want to run tubeless... I actually like spokes, but then there's the tubeless thing again. I think spoked wheels require a lot more handling in assembly, too.
Anyhow, mine was *changed out in 84, and that's that.
*FREE.

[Ken in Oklahoma]

The serial numbers are on the wheels themselves. What I was told, the dealer then charges off BMW for the wheel and service. No need to bring the bike. We'll see and report.

Like Justoneoftheguys I too had "heard" several times that the bike had to be attached to the wheel (or vice versa I guess). The BMW rationale which I also heard was that BMW didn't want to go around giving out good new wheels for bikes that had been wrecked or otherwise taken off the road.

I have a '78S bike with the recalled front wheel, though I have already bought a wheel to replace it. So it's only a point of curiosity for me, but does any body know where the S/N might be located on the original recalled wheel?

And are we talking about a S/N matching the bike S/N (which seems unlikely) or something like a casting number (not an actual S/N) which designates the, well, casting used to make the wheel? Or is there yet a third possibility that there is a stamped S/N, not the bike's S/N but which was a S/N applied to that run of wheels. (That would also suggest that the rear wheels would have been similarly given S/Ns--because BMW presumably wasn't expecting the front wheels to break any more than the rear wheels, and I haven't seen any S/Ns on "original" rear wheels them when cleaning them--and I think I would have.


Ken

[moore84rs]

I blasted and painted my snowflakes and don't remember seeing any numbers.
The new or replacement wheels were a redesign which added reinforcing gussets
at what had been determined to be the weak areas. The mold was either modified
or replaced. The old wheels don't have those gussets, so it is easy to identify them
by just looking at them.

[George Ryals]

https://www.bmwmc.net/catalog/01.pdf

This link takes you to the service bulletin about the recalled wheels. It shows where to look for the casting date. There is no mention of a serial number. The date is the determining factor as to whether the wheel is a bad one or not.

[vanzen]

Boxerworks contributor Rob Frankham has put together an excellent page with all the pertinent flake data.

The dreaded BMW front wheel recall

A good source of flake information ...

Visuals makes the difference obvious –

PRE-recall:

POST-recall:



p.s. The porosity issue should be moot –
flakes are not intended to be run without tubes.

[Ken in Oklahoma]

. . . p.s. The porosity issue should be moot –
flakes are not intended to be run without tubes.

Hee, hee, hee

P.S. I got the dreaded red X's instead of your snowflake pics.


Ken