Bad news

[RSRiding@xxxxxxx]

Wednesday evening as I returned home from work, I had a problem with my '94 
R1100RS. 
After pausing at a 4-way stop intersection, I began to accelerate. The bike 
was running fine but suddenly began to slow. There were some large 
clattering/clanking sounds from somewhere but I had no time to determine where as I came 
to a complete stop within less than 100 feet. There had been no warning signs, 
no earlier sounds, nothing. 

I can still shift gears and the bike will idle just fine in neutral. However, 
the rear wheel appears to be totally locked up with virtually no play 
available (in neutral) when I try to move it by hand. 

A towing company was called and they came out with a trailer to take it away. 
They had a pretty cool trailer that electrically dropped from several inches 
off the ground to flush on the ground. As we (me plus the two guys that came 
from the towing company) pushed/pulled/cajoled the bike onto the trailer, it 
appeared the wheel rotated slightly but not much.

I realize this is not much to go on, but I'm open to ideas of what might have 
happened. I'm figuring that I've been bitten by the dreaded BMW rear drive 
failure. This is the bike I rode on the Iron Butt Rally last summer where I 
logged 16,000 miles in 16,000 without a burp. Now, 3,000 miles later, this 
happens. The bike received a full service both before leaving and after returning 
from the rally, so if I got what I paid for in the way of service, it shouldn't 
be related to a lack of maintenance.

Was I just lucky last summer and it now be my time for failure? The bike now 
has 68,000 miles total on it and I was hoping that by having gone that long I 
had dodged the rear drive failure bullet. The bike is now sitting in the local 
BMW dealership, but they warned me that they were really backed up and 
wouldn't even be able to look at it for a while.

Geoffrey Greene
Knoxville, Tennessee

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