Stripping a BMW Airhead

On the shortest day of the year, as the sun set in the middle of the afternoon, I found myself driving into the country to help Jeff the motorcycle Jedi lift the engine out of his BMW airhead cafe racer project.

Since it came out of the shed it had been hibernating in for over a decade, the old R100 has been stripped down to its bits and pieces.  Jeff is going to get the frame powder coated which was why I was there to help get that big air cooled lump out.

A BMW R100RT stripped down to its component parts emphasizes just what a simple and elegant machine this is.  We were both able to easily lift the boxer engine out of the frame.  I doubt it weighed much more than a hundred pounds.  Even with all the pieces laid out on tables, the BMW seems to be made of less parts than you'd need to put together a working motorcycle, let alone a touring model.

So far the only new piece purchased is the cafe racer seat in the photo.  Jeff intends to take a sawzall to the frame over the holiday break and then industrially clean all of the components before reassembling the cafe resurrected R100RT.

With the parts laid out it doesn't look like there's enough there to build a motorbike.  The R100 is an elegantly simple machine.

The home-made motorcycle stand is doing a fine job on its first big project.

That air cooled boxer engine is a piece of industrial art!

A naked R100RT frame prior to some modification.

Rainy Day Carburators

A cold, rainy Saturday had me break down the carburetor on the Yamaha XS1100.  A Triumph Spitfire and Mercury LN7 owned as a teen made me pretty handy with carburetors.  In addition to multiple rebuilds I also got handy at jury rigging manual chokes thanks to the utterly crap Ford Escort carb set up.

The beautiful Mikuni unit on the Yamaha looks like a piece of industrial art in comparison to the pedestrian Triumph and Ford carbs, unfortunately it's seized.  After breaking down the top end I soaked it and freed up the seized throttle body.

The next to-do with the Yamaha is to clean up the gas tank and then reassemble the fuel system.  The engine isn't seized and spins easily, so I think I'll have an easy time firing it up for the first time in years (knock on wood).

Here are some pics of Mikuni's Yamaha masterpiece:

The throttle cable wasn't playing nice even after taking apart the handle bar - so into the carb I go...

The Yamaha XS1100 engine block with the carbs off - it got the Warhol treatment....

Like everything else so far, the internals look to be in good shape on the old (35 year old!) Yamaha

Cleaning up the fasteners using the caps from each carb to keep things organized.

XS1100 is in for surgery

Not many riding days left as the weather turns up here in Canada