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I got screwed!

JBChucktown said:
Mine was 2014 and had 2nd gen tensioner mechanical. It started making noise and found out it was tensioner.
I had the shops call and fight to get mine replaced. They called for over 6 weeks and finally was shutdown by BWM Germany.
I paid $1200 for the hydraulic upgrade.
This was the 2nd one. The first scooter I had was 2015 and did what yours did to the motor. Complete loss and now selling for parts.
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....and you still bought another one???
 
Skutorr said:
...and all this is why BMW no longer imports, makes or sells the C-Series Scooter anywhere on earth. They decided to just AXE the poor design permanently, rather than spend any more $ on trying to make it EURO-5 compliant. (Everyone else did though...)They even axed the C-Evolution electric scooter they had for a while.
I really had liked the 650 Sport style redesign, but the mechanical underpinnings were still fatally flawed.

If you still want a maxi twin, since the Tmax isn't sold here anymore, new plan! Sell your C-600/650's for whatever you can get and buy the still available Kymco AK550. Solid, reliable and NOT built in China to the lowest possible price point. (And again, the BMW's drivetrain was NOT a Kymco design, they just oversaw the Lonchin factory FOR BMW, as they know scooters and are Chinese (Taiwanese) themselves.)

It was worth a try at the beginning! A new Maxi from BMW? My brother and I were both onboard and excited, with him already riding his Big Burgman 650 and me on my Majesty 400. Then the problems and recalls hit. And kept coming for the entire product life. It could have and SHOULD have been a different story, but unfortunately it was what it was. The good news is that both KYMCO and SYM looked at it all and said "REALLY? Come on BMW, it's not Rocket Science " and developed their own Maxis which are really good.

And through it all, Yamaha and the Tmax just kept OWNING the market, and it even has cruise control. Maybe HONDA will change things with the Forza 750? Who can say.
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BMW still makes C series. New C400 GT and the electric scooter.
in USA there are not that many choices for maxi scooters, only Yamaha XMAX 300CC, Burgman.
 
Delray said:
"I presume you would expect to change chain rail #1 first - probably at 20,000; then chain rail #2 at 40,000 and so on. Or do you change them all at the same time?"

My apologies if I was unclear. I said, "we are supposed to change chain rails every 15,000 miles ...". That's plural, and one could infer that there is more than one chain rail. There is only one, replaced in the same position by the next one. At 15,000 miles/24,000 km you take out #1 and replace it with #2. At 30,000 miles/48,000 km #2 comes out and #3 goes in. Each chain rail is bulkier to hold tension as the chain expands during the course of its life. I will go back to my original post and edit to make this clear. At 12,000 km, you're halfway to swapping out your chain rail (singular).
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Finally at 22,000 km I decided it was time to change tension on the drive chain of my c650gt. Inspection through the little removable flap on the chaincase revealed a bit of slack in the chain. About half an inch. So changing up a rail should put everything OK again.
Somewhere, maybe on this forum, I had read that a bike can have an unexpected rail already installed, so in order to check which rail I already had, I removed the chaincase. What I found amazed me.
I am putting a photo on here, so that someone more knowledgeable than me can put me right - I seem to have all 4 rails installed! If so, that means that the previous owner had installed all 4 by the time he sold the bike, with only 12,000 Km on the odometer. I have done the next 10,000 without touching the chain. Is this possible?
And I am guessing if I take all the rails out, I will then take a link out of the chain? Or get a new chain? My understanding of the rails installed here (in the pic) is that rail number 2 is the short one disappearing at the top left hand end of the chaincase; the long one underneath it, and on top of the chain, is no.1; long number 3 is under the chain, with short, chunky number 4 attached to number 3 but riding on top of the bottom run of chain.
Or have I got all this completely wrong?
 

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Not sure I understand completely - but, I was the one who posted that, on inspection and wanting to 'up' my chain rail from what must have been the original one (I bought my scoot with less than 2K miles on the clock) I found that it already had no 2 installed, so I upped it to no. 3. So, apparently from the factory they already installed no 2 for the right amount of slack. I don't recall what the proper interval is to check/up the rail, but I suspect at 10K km (6K miles) you have been fine.
Now onto what I am not clear about, you seem to be saying you think your bike has 4 adjuster rails installed all at once? This is physically impossible, there can only ever be one adjuster rail (the type we are talking about, that has the 4 different variants, one just a bit taller than the last one, 4 being the tallest and 1 being the lowest) installed. Yes there are other guide pieces installed to guide/contain the chain, but those are not the adjuster rail we are talking about. I hope that's clear and we're not talking cross-purposes.
I suggest you check which of the 4 different height variants you have in your bike: no 1, 2, 3 or 4. If you are really already at 4, my understanding is you have to get a new chain. Removing a link is not the way to go, the chain is stretched and will continue to stretch, and won't fit on the cogs anymore like it is supposed to, you would need to get a brand new chain from BMW. But this should only be with very high mileage bikes is my understanding.
 
Thanks for the quick reply, Ceesie76. It is clearer to me now. I have a pic (posted here a while ago) which appears to be printed from the workshop manuals - and it shows four items, numbered 1, 2, 3, and 4, plus their retaining screws/bolts. I thought those numbered items were the adjustment "rails" although only 2 of them even look like rails.
So one of these 4 items is actually the adjustment rail, and presumably I have number 1 of these items installed now, and must change it to number 2, which makes perfect sense.
My question now is, which one of these things I thought were adjustment rails is actually the adjustment rail which needs to be changed?
Back to the workshop manual ...
 
Got it. I will need to carefully examine the existing adjustment rail - get the part number, it will tell me which one it is, and I will go from there. Thanks again for helping me sort it out.
 
Good evening,

According to the diagram you are referring to, the lower guide rail is number 3 on the diagram. It regulates chain tension.

In your photo, I can clearly see that this guide rail (the one that adjusts chain tension) is a STUFE 1. You can therefore order STUFE 2 (reference : 33 35 8 533 984)
 
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Dean Theriot said:
have read these tensioner are defective and it seems to me that the 2015s on should have had the hydraulic tensioners installed like was used on the recall of earlier models. Its also obvious that the dealership doesn't want any part of this repair.
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There was no recall to go from the mechanical to hydrolic tensioner. It was an updated mechanical tensioner but it was still a failure, I went through 3 of them then I paid for the hydrolic
 
Kiss4u said:
Good evening,

According to the diagram you are referring to, the lower guide rail is number 3 on the diagram. It regulates chain tension.

In your photo, I can clearly see that this guide rail (the one that adjusts chain tension) is a STUFE 1. You can therefore order STUFE 2 (reference : 33 35 8 533 984)
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Thanks kiss4u. I have it sorted now - tension rail changed from stage 1 to stage 2 - chain is now exactly right. Did it all at a little over 21,000 km, and it is an easy job. At my age, I may never need to do it again! (almost 80).
 
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