Cracked S1000RR fork

Am I wrong or is this a common issue?

Found a crack along the bottom of the right fork on my S1000rr last week. The crack was through the axle pich bolts. No idea what caused the crack but I ordered another off ebay and replaced it. As I was tourqing the pinch bolts I noticed a crack in the same place. I was using a tourqe wrench set to 17ftlb to be sure I didn't crack the fork.

Is this a common thing or do I need to throw away my tourqe wrench and deal with my bad work?

 

Here are couple pictures of the original fork.

 

Man that sucks.
What year is your RR?
I have a single R, and I'll go look at mine. (2018 model.)

 

2011

 

Are you using stock pinch bolts?
BTW this should be in technical section.

 

Are you sure you're using the correct axel?

 

I've never seen a crack through that location before, there also seems to be a lot of scoring on the inside diameter where the axle sits.

Was your bike crashed at any time?

 

Something must be wrong or going on there. Seems like to crack that it would take alot more than 17 ft. lbs even if your torque wrench is off some.

 

Stock forks, pinch bolts and axle. Yes, it's been crashed. I put the axle through to make sure everything was lined up before putting the wheel on and tightening everything down.

Maybe the lower triple is tweaked or something?

 

who manufactures the forks for BMW?

 

The only viable solution is to throw away the bike and get a new one.

 

Ducati recalled a bunch of ohlins forks back in the day for the same issue. Unfortunately once theyre cracked like that, they're garbage. The fork bottoms can be replaced individually, but it's probably easier to just get a new fork completely. Also, if it was a common issue on a 10yr old popular bike, it'd be all over 'the forums', so if you're not getting a bunch of hits when searching, it's probably not a common occurrence.

 

I should have consulted the service manual first instead of Google.

Service manual says 19NM (14 ft lb). So 17 ft lb was too tight. Still seems crazy they would crack with just three extra. But I'll blame myself and my failure to pay attention to detail.

 

Is a spacer missing?

 

I don't believe 3lbs extra would do that.

 

My guess is the pinch bolts were tightened without the axle being in place.

 

Was thinking similar thus my missing spacer question

 

I do not think that the 3 lb/ft difference is the issue. The error in the torque wrench is probably larger than that.
You are typically much more likely to strip the threads out of the aluminum than you are to crack the casting that way.

Reading the original post again, are you saying that the replacement fork leg was also cracked in the same place?

 

I must admit that I gave been drinking but I think this may be a design flaw. With proper design margin, given the background this never should have happened twice.

 

Yeah. That’s what I said when the second kid was born.