As everyone knows, 2020 was not a good year for traveling of any kind. Especially international travel. I had a couple things planned for the year which had to be canceled. In early 2020 I started doing some major work on my motorcycle. It kept me busy and was fun and interesting. I thought I would provide some pictures of the work I did. I've done work on the bike over the years, but this was so much work and occupied so much of this year I thought I'd post this. If you know anything about BMW Airheads, you'll understand what I did by the pictures. If you don't, then you probably could care less about this page of my website anyway...
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Might as well start by stopping. Going to replace the front disc brakes that is. |
Easy enough to replace the front brake pads, but might as well do it all. |
Also did a complete rebuild of the front brake calipers. |
Replaced stock discs with EBC floating rotors. Really nice. |
Added Denali yellow daytime running lights (DRLs) for visibility. |
Determined low compression, later found the valves were not seating properly. Time for a top-end job... |
Head off, top of piston exposed. Not to be confused with top dead center (TDC). |
Cylinders will get new stainless steel pushrod tubes and pushrod tube seals. |
There's part of the problem. The valves were not seating properly. |
While I'm waiting, replaced the oil pressure switch. |
Sent heads, cylinders, and pistons in to BeemerShop. New springs, valves, rings, stainless pushrod tubes, etc. and a nice vapor blasting treatment. Ain't they pretty? |
Some assembly required. Piston and cylinder back on the bike. |
Head back on the bike. Need to adjust the valves. Remember - torque, torque, torque, very important. |
Organization, a key to rebuilding the carbs. All the new parts placed in a muffin tin, the old parts put into a matching empty muffin tin. |
It's the little things. Like which cable is choke and which is throttle. Don't ask... |
Replacing diaphragm, jet needle, and spring. Make sure everything aligns and the jet needle is on the right notch (the 3rd notch for me). |
I'm using a main jet of 145 and idle jet of 45. Lots of fun getting the new o-rings on. |
Enricher gets new gasket and o-ring. A real Airhead knows it's not really a choke. |
Ready to start putting back together with all new o-rings, gaskets, floats, float needle, jets, springs, diaphragms, everything. |
Both carbs ready to go back on the bike. |
Took the old petcocks zu (off) and put new petcocks auf (on). A bit of fuel petcock humor. |
New Thunderchild dioide board. Determined a couple diodes were bad, but I sure didn't know it by riding the bike. |
New brushes installed. This job should have been easy. Yup, should have been. |
The famous Airhead Bean Can, remanufactured by Euro MotoElectrics (EME). There are several options to replace this, I chose to stick with the Bean Can. |
Went with a Denso starter. There are several (cheaper) options to replace the starter, I chose this option. |
New Bosch ignition coil. |
New voltage regulator. I'm going to miss the pretty blue color under the tank. |
New Thunderchild Ignition Control Module. This thing does so much related to the starting and running of the bike. |
New light relay, why not? |
Now simply called the yellow relay, it's for the starter, horn and various switches. |
New 'choke' cable that goes to the splitter. My 544mm cable was not available, so I bought the 671mm cable for the '77-'84 RS. No problem. |
The 'choke' cable splitter and the left/right cables were still available. |
As smooth as I thought the clutch pull was, the new clutch cable made it so much nicer. Apparently, I was overdue for a new clutch cable. |
I liked the front Denali yellow DRL lights so much, I bought the matching rear Denali red parking/brake lights. I already had replaced the stock tail/brake light with LED years ago. |
Nice clean install, lots of bright light. I additionally bought a flashing unit so the Denali brake lights flash. ATTENTION GRABBER!!!!! |
New Michelin Pilot Activ tires for front and rear. I really like these on this bike. |
Decided to buy a No-mar tire changer. Got a great deal. |
No problem removing and reinstalling tires when you have the right tools. Also got a really nice Marc Parnes wheel balancer (on the right) to complete the job. |
Finally, all back together and running phenomenal. Time for some riding. Here's where you would normally go to the next set of pictures, my next trip, but one more picture left. |
A little late, but still oh, so nice... Now that all this *fun* work was done, I buy a Harbor Freight motorcycle lift. But, there's always more *fun* to come... |