ABS brakes?

Unfortunately, those tests were planned and the riders knew they had to brake hard. In an emergency you don't have those
luxuries. You hit the brakes too hard in an emergency and you're going down. With ABS you are staying up and braking
with control

There is definitely a second or more when even the expert takes to get on the brakes for an emergency. With ABS you just
squeeze the crap out the brakes immediately, and you can think about manouvering the bike instead of keep it upright.

 

I have a 1988 K100RS and there is a toggle switch on the dashpad that turns ABS off. I believe all the early Kbikes had
that. I'm surprised they don't all have it, leave it to BMW to know what's best for us...

Good idea. But if you're coming down a steep hill with a stop at the bottom and the road is all washboard, you better
start braking early or you'll sail right through that stopsign. I'll turn mine off in that situation thanks.

 

Mark, this sounds very much like your battery voltage at startup is falling too low. Test with a new battery and it
might work. Also, there is recently a long reset that has revived some ABS computers from the dead. Definitely check
into it.

 

The ABS switch on my '91 K100RS is a momentary switch - I believe it's
just a reset switch rather than an on/off switch.

Of course, on MY bike (with the fried ABS computer), it's really just
a switch that resets the blinking ABS error light to a continuous ABS
error light.

Mark "blinking or steady, it's annoying" Hickey

 

Did both (read above), no joy.

Mark "ABSless" Hickey

 

Bleeding ABS is no different than standard brakes. Now the cross linked
brakes with multiple hoses everywhere might prove a bit of a challenge.

pierce

 

Sorry about that. I forgot to add YMMV. My experience doesn't cover all
makes and models.

I remember one BMW car that came in for cooling system service. It required
you to jack up the front end to a certain degreed angle to get all the air
out of the cooling system. It was a rather steep angle too if I recall
correctly.

pierce

 

ABS isn't the only thing to worry about in 20 years. What about the
electronic ignition, fuel injection system, and other things like engine
management.

To be honest things like ECU would worry me more than ABS. ABS can be
bypassed. An ECU cannot. If someone came up with a universal ECU in the
next 10-20 years then that would be fine but I dont expect that to happen.
Repair an ECU? Not unless you are very lucky. I have seen what Bosch
has done with ABS controllers and it isn't pretty. To repair a broken
wire that is internal to the unit, one needs a micro soldering station,
stereo microscope, etc to repair it. The wires are at least 1/2 the
diameter of the finest baby hair. I have seen the wires connecting the
external leads of a chip to the silicon die inside an IC and this is much
thinner.

Planned obsolescence is now finally here for bikes.

The other killer is that there is no reason that the ECU or ABS controller
should cost more than $200 retail. I don't see but $20 - $30 in parts
inside one including the case.

Having said all that, my next bike is going to have ABS and electronic
fuel injection. If it turns to junk in 20-30 years I will not be riding
then anyway. Hopefully I will be dead.

pierce

 

I may be able to enlighten you. I work for a computer manufacturer. We
have our own proprietary disk controller board. If you look at our disk
controller board, you'll see maybe $200 worth of parts. Nevertheless,
the actual cost of the board is significantly higher, both in terms of
amortized NRE (non-recurring engineering) and simply because we build
high end systems thus buy these boards in quantity 100 (which is
expensive) rather than in quantity 1,000 or, better yet, 100,000, where
we could get them manufacturered for much cheaper (on a per-unit basis).

Now, granted, this board is slightly more complex than the one inside an
ECU or ABS controller. But since we are basically using reference
designs, our NRE is much lower than for a ECU or ABS controller, where I
suspect the NRE is multiple millions of dollars (and up). But the point
is that when you are doing small production runs of a proprietary
technology, it is expensive. And motorcycles ARE small production runs,
by the standards of the electronics industry. BMW sells, what, less than
100,000 motorcycles world-wide in a year? Peanuts. Even if they all used
the exact same hardware and were bought in lots of 1,000 delivered every
two weeks, they would go through a "small batch" electronics
manufacturer rather than one of the high-quantity Asian vendors, and
when you divide the number of units sold by the NRE costs, then add in a
hefty dealer markup, you see the hefty costs you see at the dealership
(especially from small-quantity vendors like BMW, which unlike Honda
cannot leverage the same technology across millions of bikes sold
world-wide thus must amortize NRE across a much smaller number of units).

Now I hear you ask: "Why isn't some supplier coming out with a
'universal' ABS and ECU?" The answer is that there is significant NRE
involved in creating an ABS or ECU system that is flexible enough to be
used with a wide spectrum of possible hardware, and few customers, since
the major manufacturers already have their own designs. Thus it is
impossible to design and sell one for less than what the major
manufacturers sell them, you cannot amortize the NRE over enough units
to make it viable. It is simple dollars and cents... the manufacturers
see proprietary advantage in maintaining their own designs, thus there
simply is no market for a "universal" ABS and ECU unit. Not yet, anyhow...

- Elron

 

<snip>

One of the most thoughtful and intelligent posts I've read on this
forum.

 

Well put Gene!

It may seem like a kluge but lets face it, one is dealing with a closed
hydralic system. One has to deal with issues like detection of the rate of
speed change, relative speed of the vehicle, a mechanism to back off the
pressure when necessary no matter how high the incoming pressure is, and do
it without a loss of master cyliner pressure. It will never be pretty. If
we had an electric brake system instead of hydralic then it would be a lot
easier to design an ABS. We already have throttle by wire so the next
logical step is brake by wire. Fly by wire has been around for years and
that has worked quite well.

My next bike will still have ABS and fuel injection because I want it and I
will pay extra for ABS and happily pay extra too.

pierce

 

"You're a pessimist", replied Schroedinger, "it is half-alive!!!"

 

Me 2, already almost six hours now!