Scary Looking Transmission Oil! (With Pics)

'96 R1100RT with 79K miles. With the help if members here, I've already diagnosed that I have worn shift dogs in my M94 gearbox. Since there's no practical way to repair it, I've just been riding it, avoiding 3rd gear, and making a plan to replace it with an M97 when I find a used one.

I drained my final drive and transmission oil following a ride this morning. Final drive oil looked fine, and there was no metal particulate on the final drive drain plug magnet. The tranny oil however was alarming.

It appears to be completely and uniformly contaminated with aluminum. It almost looks like mercury like you'd find in a switch or in carb sticks. Interestingly, there was no metal particulate on the drain plug magnet -- which would seem to indicate there's not gear or bearing damage being done.

Clearly something is being chewed up in there. I would be interested in any thoughts as to what's going on.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Hmmm... not sure why those links aren't loading the images. The links are active, I just don't have the coding correct. If you click the links, you can see the pics.

'96 R1100RT with 79K miles. With the help if members here, I've already diagnosed that I have worn shift dogs in my M94 gearbox. Since there's no practical way to repair it, I've just been riding it, avoiding 3rd gear, and making a plan to replace it with an M97 when I find a used one.

 

I drained my final drive and transmission oil following a ride this morning. Final drive oil looked fine, and there was no metal particulate on the final drive drain plug magnet. The tranny oil however was alarming.

 

It appears to be completely and uniformly contaminated with aluminum. It almost looks like mercury like you'd find in a switch or in carb sticks. Interestingly, there was no metal particulate on the drain plug magnet -- which would seem to indicate there's not gear or bearing damage being done.

 

Clearly something is being chewed up in there. I would be interested in any thoughts as to what's going on.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

EDIT: Hmmm... not sure why those links aren't loading the images. The links are active, I just don't have the coding correct. If you click the links, you can see the pics.

Morning tvpierce

Assuming that really is aluminum & not some strange transmission additive that someone added to try to help transmission shifting then you definitely have a major problem.

If it is aluminum in the gear oil then you probably have a severely worn bearing or worn shaft at the bearing that is allowing the shaft to move enough to cause contacting the alloy trans case.

I've owned the bike for the last 40K miles, and have done all the maintenance myself. That's Mobil-1 gear oil with no additives.

posting for the op -

first pic:

second pic:

edit: for some reason I can't get the second image to load... grrr!

posting for the op -

 

first pic:

 

 

second pic:

 

Morning szurszewski

The OP's pictures worked just fine, yours only show an X.

posting for the op -

 

first pic:

 

 

second pic:

 

 

Morning szurszewski

 

The OP's pictures worked just fine, yours only show an X.

That's odd - viewed on Chrome, I just see a URL inside the img tags for his - one of two works for me in my post. Just trying to help, but apparently I'm not doing a good job! Sigh.

Morning szurszewski

This is what we see!