[jacco]

I cannot vouch for the listing above, but since the official DVD from BMW is not available I ended up getting this about 2 months ago:

BMW R 1250 R K53 11 WORKSHOP SERVICE MANUAL DOWNLOAD | eBay

MODEL: K53 11. FORMAT: INSTANT DOWNLOAD ONLY. Instant download. BMW CODE: 0J71, 0J73. Another BMW modelshere. Digital service manual in English that contains all the necessary instructions needed for any repair your vehicle may require.

www.ebay.com

That worked like a charm and is searchable. (It's even a few $$$ cheaper and I could download it within hours of payment.)

Jacco

 

[fireman]

I cannot vouch for the listing above, but since the official DVD from BMW is not available I ended up getting this about 2 months ago:

BMW R 1250 R K53 11 WORKSHOP SERVICE MANUAL DOWNLOAD | eBay

MODEL: K53 11. FORMAT: INSTANT DOWNLOAD ONLY. Instant download. BMW CODE: 0J71, 0J73. Another BMW modelshere. Digital service manual in English that contains all the necessary instructions needed for any repair your vehicle may require.

www.ebay.com

That worked like a charm and is searchable. (It's even a few $$$ cheaper and I could download it within hours of payment.)

Jacco

What is the format of the software? ISO, or something else?

 

[jacco]

What is the format of the software? ISO, or something else?

No, it is just one big (1190-page) pdf file. So no software, just a document.

 

[Jack the Lad]

Presumably searchable? I suppose, if not, Adobe Acrobat could make it searchable.

 

[jacco]

Presumably searchable? I suppose, if not, Adobe Acrobat could make it searchable.

Yes, it is searchable, it's not like scanned images or anything. There is an index too IIRC, I don't have it handy right now.

 

[Jack the Lad]

Thanks. I've ordered one.

 

[43220]

That worked like a charm, and is searchable.

We may have a winner there . Thank you for posting that. Will wait for somebody to confirm it has an index, and would buy it immediately if it does. Great find. And the seller is from the UK, not Spain, so feel a lot better about not having a double-translation. Oh, and how big is the file? Thank you.

 

[jacco]

We may have a winner there . Thank you for posting that. Will wait for somebody to confirm it has an index, and would buy it immediately if it does. Great find. And the seller is from the UK, not Spain, so feel a lot better about not having a double-translation. Oh, and how big is the file? Thank you.

Attached is a screenshot. 247 Mb file.

 

[jacco]

Attached is a screenshot. 247 Mb file.

Sorry, attempt #2 for that attachment.

 

[fireman]

So this might be a legit repair manual then... Does it have any copyright information or anything indicating the origin of the information and the file?

 

[jacco]

So this might be a legit repair manual then... Does it have any copyright information or anything indicating the origin of the information and the file?

Sorry, but I doubt that this is legit. I mean, the content is probably legitimately from BMW originally, but I doubt that this seller has the right to sell this to us in this form. Every page reads "www . software-motor . com | Delivering your downloads anywhere, at any time" at the bottom of it, in red, more or less on top of the "202105 BMW Motorrad, UX-VA-4" footer...

Anyway, I'd have been happy to pay BMW the ~$100 for the DVD, but that's apparently no longer an option, so what are we supposed to do? Go to the dealership for every light bulb change?

 

[jacco]

Oh, and no copyright page that I could find. (But I did not look very hard.)

 

[Jack the Lad]

It's legit in the sense that it is from BMW, but probably not for sale with BMWs consent, which makes it illegit.

I ordered a copy anyway on the basis that I fail to see why BMW should effectively force me to go the dealership to have work done, at great expense, most of which I can probably do better myself.

Does this make me a bad person? Probably, along with a laundry list of other misdoings.

 

[43220]

I'd have been happy to pay BMW the ~$100 for the DVD, but that's apparently no longer an option, so what are we supposed to do?

That's exactly what I think. If we had an option to buy it from BMW directly, buying this 'fake' would make us a 'bad person'. Ha ha. But not when we have no other choice, so I won't feel bad about buying it either. Ha ha. So it has a 'clickable' index, correct? That's the last question I have before buying it. In other works, if you click to any item in the index, it takes you there, correct? Thank you guys.

 

[fireman]

It's legit in the sense that it is from BMW, but probably not for sale with BMWs consent, which makes it illegit.

I ordered a copy anyway on the basis that I fail to see what BMW should effectively force me to go the dealership to have work done, at great expense, most of which I can probably do better myself.

Does this make me a bad person? Probably, along with a laundry list of other misdoings.

I aggrege, that some of the work can be done better and cheaper by the owner. Ask me how I know: I couldn't find an authorized repair shop that would want to do a valve check and adjustment on my previous motorcycle when I needed it, and I'm in New York City... The quoted cost was $600-$800, for what essentially is one to two hours of work for a knowledgeable mechanic, but nobody wanted to do it. I had to do it myself... saved $ but spent my time. Same bike: when a final drive had a failure (second) I couldn't get it fixed when I needed because authorized mechanic didn't have time to investigate what it was and wouldn't be able to get parts I needed in reasonable time. I fixed it myself for $120 with parts of eBay... I can keep going.

My only concern is the quality of the information... not necessarily that it is legit to sell it. I'm mostly concerned just with the accuracy of the information. I wish we could somehow check this against a known good source of technical data.
As far as the end consumer is concerned, everything that is sold on eBay comes from legitimate merchants, otherwise eBay should be sued by whoever is the legal owner of the IP. It is not my problem as an end consumer to verify legitimacy of listing... my main goal is acquisition of a quality product for a reasonable price.

 

[43220]

My only concern is the quality of the information... not necessarily that it is legit to sell it.

Yeah, that is the same concern most of us have. But seems like it's legit BMW info, at least by what was already posted; just not legit to sell it, I guess. The easy way to verify some info would be to 'rent' a day of info on the legit BMW site, and check random info from several different areas, from valve adjustment procedure to torque figures, to final drive ones, and maybe fork oil change procedure, and throttle body synchronization (if needed). That'd be pretty much the deepest most owners would delve into, so relatively easy to check . Or maybe somebody here already paid to look up some of that info, and it'd be just a matter to compare it to this manual for accuracy.

 

[Jack the Lad]

Approached from another direction, why wouldn't the info be good? FAR too much effort to create a manual with deliberately incorrect info, and for what?

If you want incorrect info, buy a newspaper or listen to the TV news

I think it is simply a bootleg copy of a BMW manual from which someone is making a little money (and doing me a favor in the process).

 

[fireman]

I've done some searching online, and code UX-VA-4 comes-up on various BMW service documents. Telling myself this must be documentation made by BMW (so it must be good, lol), I've convinced myself and pulled the plug, and ordered from UK seller.

PDF is searchable, it has a table of content, and you can click on individual items in the table of content. Looks like it is a document that has been formatted somewhat purely, but at the same time, usable. Most probably BMW software uses this or a type of this document as back-bone for instructions.

Document is written in normal English, references specialized tools and torque numbers, etc. This is usable and I'm glad to have a copy of it, even if I never need to use it.

 

[Panzermann]

Looks to me the seller has found a way to publish a model-specific pdf from the original BMW soft manual. Clever.
I, too, am wary of the copyright status, but what’s a DIYer supposed to do …

 

[fireman]

The age we live in:

Farmers are hacking their tractors so they can actually fix them

Not only is proprietary software an issue with John Deere, it's a problem that could affect your car, as well.

www.cnet.com