Rotting rubber woes…
Posted: Mon Mar 18, 2024 4:19 pm
A few years ago a found a nice survivor R80GS that had been parked for 7-8 years and decided to bring it home and resurrect it. I went through and resealed everything, rebuilt much of it and generally fell in love with the bike. I completed the work about two years ago mounted a fresh set of Metzeler Enduro Sahara’s. Fast forward to the end of last season I noticed that a lot of the rubber parts I replaced were starting to crack and fail. Pushrod rubbers, driveshaft boot, even the tires with about 800 miles were showing cracks. Meanwhile the exact same tires I had removed which were clearly a decade old, though worn had no such defects. As I’m not really interested in doing a fresh top-end reseal every other year or having to replace driveshaft boots and tires as often I’m really perplexed as to what is going on. The bike lives indoors and is generally parked next to several other vintage classics that show no such rapid deterioration. I’ve put about 1000 miles of mostly paved riding on the R80 and other than that the bike has never been left in direct sunlight for more than a few hours.
Most of the rubber parts were sourced from either MAX BMW or EME. The tires came from Revzilla. I’m completely baffled by how these parts look to be easily 40 years old instead of barely 2. I know modern rubber parts are not nearly as high of quality as they once were but this seems absurd.
Any idea what could be causing such rapid deteriorating of these parts or is the quality just that bad?
Most of the rubber parts were sourced from either MAX BMW or EME. The tires came from Revzilla. I’m completely baffled by how these parts look to be easily 40 years old instead of barely 2. I know modern rubber parts are not nearly as high of quality as they once were but this seems absurd.
Any idea what could be causing such rapid deteriorating of these parts or is the quality just that bad?