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Brighter weather ahead
Posted by Brickboy on March 11, 2024, 12:27 pm
After quite a month or three of a desert in classified adverts I've, quite by chance, come across a chap who wants to sell both his lovely airhead BMW and his R1100GS.
It just goes to show the old rule: the best bikes change hands not via adverts but good old fashioned chatting.
As I vacillate between the perfect, classic, granite build quality of airheads and the excellent comfort, power and brakes of the 1100s, it would seem wrong not to buy both.
So I expect I shall!
Re: Brighter weather ahead
Posted by geoff the bonnie on March 11, 2024, 12:49 pm, in reply to "Brighter weather ahead"
Buy them Simon, they will give you several weeks of fun
I recommend a sweepstake. Come on, you must all have an idea. Perhaps you should start counting in minutes rather than hours though! And don't forget, I haven't paid yet so there's still time to back out
the perfect, classic, granite build quality of airheads and the excellent comfort, power and brakes of the 1100s
Strange how we can come to different concusions about the same bikes.
I have had 3 different post '81 airheads & Mrs B still has her '84 built (but '86 registered) R65LS. None have had "granite build quality" being, at best adequate and in some areas deficiant. My first (an R100RS, two years old & 8800 miles at the time of purchase in 1984) was very tired when I moved it on 5 1/2 years and around 40K miles later - worn valve guides, sacked out seat (again - it had veen rebuilt once already) & soggy suspension. It was the only bike that broke down on me while on touring abroad (clutch went). The near new R100GS I made the mistake of buying after I didn't gel with the K100RT that replaced the R100RS was not well finished, uncomfortable, uneconomical & harsh. It depreciated like it had fallen off a cliff as well. The last one was an '84 R100RT bought from a friend at 17 years old with 50K showing (he had owned it from being a year old & 3.5K) - that needed a full rebuild, having many of the same issues as my original R100RS (valve guides, soggy suspension, seat etc). Ran it for a few years and around 15K after the rebuild, but sold it on when I came to realise that I didn't look forward to riding it. Not felt the need to revist BMWs since.
Mrs B's R65LS is getting on for 95K miles now, but it has not been spectacularly reliable either. She wants to get 100K on it (it was 6 months old with 800 miles showing when she bought it in Jan 1987) & I am very much hoping she will the honourably retire it then so I don't have to work on it any more !
I tried the oil heads when they came out & hated the harsh, un-refined lumps with their odd-feeling "funny" front end, truly awful gearboxes & dismal finish. Plus the faired models seeem to be awful to work on, the dodgy greased driveshaft joints that fail scrapping the rear drive housing & swing arm etc. - a motorcycle range that holds no attractions at all for me.
Still that does mean that there will be at least one person who will not be offering you any competition when it comes to buying one (or the other - or both ! ) Simon !
Hope you find something that you want to keep for more than a few weeks (days ?) and ride in your soon-to-be-found free time this summer.
Most unlikely, Geoff, unless my mate's divorce is a lot quicker than it has been. His (my old) gorgeous R1100RT is hiding there in the interim and I can ride it whenever I like.
I aspired to a BMW when I was starting out (probably due to articles in Motorcycle Sport), but they were so expensive back then (early '80s) and consequently rarely seem. My late friend Andy suprised me around '83 turning up on an R60/7 with a Polaris fairing - I was running a similarly faired CX 500 at the time & although the BMW was less powerful he was difficult to keep up with.
So the stage was set when the CX was stolen while on holiday in France for a Germanic replacement. I ended up with the two year old R100RS when I was 24 - on the young side for a BMW rider then & at £2800 a big chunk of cash at a time I was making around £8k gross. And it promptly let me down in Switzerland a month later ! The spline in the clutch fricton plate stripped. The cause was actually a faulty gearbox input shaft that caused the friction plate spline to wear excessively until it failed. When I got back to the UK (replacment clutch fitted in Switzerland) & broached to subject with Allen Jefferies, Tony Jefferies got a complete replacement gearbox & another clutch plate from BMW despite the warranty being expired, as there had been a number of gearboxes that had improperly hardened input shafts.
At the time - when I had figured out how to ride it - ( don't chop the throttle mid bend !) - it was probably one of the best long distance bikes available & allowed me (with Mrs B & a load of camping gear on the back) to get further, faster & more comfortably than anything I had had previously. But it was quite labour intensive to keep "on song" and some aspects were below par for what was a premium price product - short silencer life (innards rotted out - Keihans sorted that for a price), regular fork seals, collapsing seat foam come to mind + it was thirsty at around 42 mpg average - it did get worked hard, though !.
Looking back it wasn't so much what it did but the way that it did it that made it more "usable" than the more sophisticated Japanese competitors. At the time it seemed a step above, but I don't think the model has aged particularly well & they just feel a bit "of their time" to me now - the world has moved on.
I'm not suprised that you found the late model RT screen buffeted you. For reasons I am unaware of, BMW reduced the height of the RT screen in later years from the initial models. My '84 RT had such a lower screen fitted when I bought it, as the original higher item had been replaced after the bike had been knocked over in a "pack of cards" car park incident at a BMC Club meet. The screen got scuffed by another bikes handlebars & was replaced by insurance, but with the lower item as BMW had discontinued the original by then, This happened to the chap I bought the bike off, but he had got the original scuffed screen (along with the other damaged parts) from the dealer after the repair was done & included it in the sale. I disliked the low screen due to the buffeting (and I am only 5' 9" ), so polished out the scuff on the original & refitted that - no buffeting then.
The subect of declining BMW quality has been being aired since before I got mine - owners of the /2s reckoned that the /5s were not a patch on the earlier bikes & so it has been ever since ! BMW do seem to have plumbed new depths with the latest R1300GS though - a life-limited drive shaft. Mandatory replacement of the driveshaft at the customer's expense (around €900 for the part + fitting according to Motorrad) at 80K kilometers !
I won't be getting another 4 cylinder bike either - it took ownership of 4 different models (CB550F1, K100RT, GSX1100F & XJ900F) before the penny dropped that it wasn't any of the individual bikes that was the problem for me, it was the engine layout. Much prefer a torquey twin or single to a buzzy inline four any day - though I did enjoy riding my late friend Brian's VFR750 (the last of the twin sided swing arm models).
The GSX put me into the Brickboy length ownership arena - 6 days ! I bought it SH from Carnells Doncaster, who did not offer test rides but did offer a "no quibble" exchange within 7 days or 300 miles (IIRC). The only memorable thing about the bike was that it was the fastest I have ridden (155 indicated & still accelerating at the point I shut off) - otherwise I just hated pretty much everything it did & the way it did it. Only trouble with the exchange policy was that Carnells would not return your money or "undo" the deal (they wanted £1K for me to get my Guzzi back) just allowed what you had in the deal against another bike. This turned out to be a 2 year 2000 mile old "as new" XJ900F that I had to chip in another £200 for - that did at least get down into Italy & did the Stella Alpina, but got sold on in less than a year.