BMW GSA1250 Spurious Fault Codes and Intermittent Non-Starting.
Posted: Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:38 pm
My GSA1250 is 2 Years old and has done 4000mls.
I’ve had an issue with it since it was new.
Occasionally, after riding for ½ an hour or more and stopping, restarting the engine brought up error codes such as “tilt sensor fail” “traction control fail” “ABS fail” etc
Also, the bike wouldn’t start, just like the battery was flat.
It started 2nd time and all was well.
However, in last couple of months, it’s been happening regularly and finally ended in a break down when I couldn’t get it started.
BMW arrived after ½ an hour and it started 1st time – typical!!
The technician logged in and no error codes were present in the history file.
It went in to the dealer for 2 weeks and they couldn’t get it to fail.
Needless to say – it happened again. This time I waited for ½ an hour before calling BMW assist and again, it started fine.
Another technician reluctantly came out to check it over. (I made it home so BMW said it was technically no longer a break down)
Anyway, this technician was a lot more interested. Still no error codes, but he did some research on his laptop.
It turns out that back in July 2020, BMW sent out a technical bulletin to the breakdown teams, describing the symptoms of this fault perfectly.
It related to a batch of Exide batteries with a part code ending in “125”.
In my case the battery part code was 62.12 – 8 389 125.
It stated the part code for the replacement battery that should used.
He had one in his car, so he swapped it out.
The issue hasn’t happened since.
His technical bulletin stated that the batch of faulty batteries were failing when they got hot.
Hence why they were OK after ½ an hour when they had cooled down a bit.
Also, in hindsight, it did tend to happen when I was bimbling around the single width country roads at 40 – 50 mph.
So, if you’ve got a 1250 – any model, it’ll be worth checking your battery.
It is a bit disappointing that the first technician and the dealership weren’t aware of this known problem?
Cheers
Steve
I’ve had an issue with it since it was new.
Occasionally, after riding for ½ an hour or more and stopping, restarting the engine brought up error codes such as “tilt sensor fail” “traction control fail” “ABS fail” etc
Also, the bike wouldn’t start, just like the battery was flat.
It started 2nd time and all was well.
However, in last couple of months, it’s been happening regularly and finally ended in a break down when I couldn’t get it started.
BMW arrived after ½ an hour and it started 1st time – typical!!
The technician logged in and no error codes were present in the history file.
It went in to the dealer for 2 weeks and they couldn’t get it to fail.
Needless to say – it happened again. This time I waited for ½ an hour before calling BMW assist and again, it started fine.
Another technician reluctantly came out to check it over. (I made it home so BMW said it was technically no longer a break down)
Anyway, this technician was a lot more interested. Still no error codes, but he did some research on his laptop.
It turns out that back in July 2020, BMW sent out a technical bulletin to the breakdown teams, describing the symptoms of this fault perfectly.
It related to a batch of Exide batteries with a part code ending in “125”.
In my case the battery part code was 62.12 – 8 389 125.
It stated the part code for the replacement battery that should used.
He had one in his car, so he swapped it out.
The issue hasn’t happened since.
His technical bulletin stated that the batch of faulty batteries were failing when they got hot.
Hence why they were OK after ½ an hour when they had cooled down a bit.
Also, in hindsight, it did tend to happen when I was bimbling around the single width country roads at 40 – 50 mph.
So, if you’ve got a 1250 – any model, it’ll be worth checking your battery.
It is a bit disappointing that the first technician and the dealership weren’t aware of this known problem?
Cheers
Steve