The first thing I did after getting her home was
to replace all the fluids, change out the fuel and air hoses and filters,
get new carb rubbers, new plugs, and get her all cleaned up. She
ran just fine from the get-go, but everything seemed to go a lot more smoothly
with the new fluids. It had clearly been a while. She was missing
her battery covers, so I stopped by Santa Cruz BMW, and ordered a new set
in primer.
The
carbs needed a lot of cleaning, so I went after 'em with a can of carb
cleaner, a friend's good advice, a few sheets of Scotch Brite and some
polish. The carbs were then sync'ed, and suddenly she was running almost
like new (for an R65LS, this may mean hard starts, even when new. Read
the Cycle World review from 1982). The battery was weak when I got the
bike, and it finally gave up the ghost, to be replaced by a genuine BMW
unit (and the right size this time!). The valves needed adjusting as well
(not surprising!). The adjusters turned out to be stripped, so those
got replaced then. I finally got tired of riding around on a seat
covered in cracked naugahyde (the previous owner had cleverly used electrician's
tape to cover the cracks. This is fine until you start finding sticky
glue spots on your jeans 8-), so I took the seat in to get re-covered.
That added to the comfort factor much more than I was expecting, I am happy
to report. An inspection of the front forks showed the seals were in good
shape, and the springs were fine. A change of oil worked wonders.
The rear shocks are Konis, which is a nice upgrade.
The
Rack... This is something of a troubling issue... The luggage
rack is nice, but awkward and cumbersome. The only hint of body damage
is on the rear seat cowling. In this photo, you can see a spot where
some of the fiberglass has chipped off. There are a couple of other
small (less than 1 cm square) spots on the cowling that have been touched
up, where the rack has met fiberglass. Because of the location of
the rack, the seat does not swing open on the hinges like it was intended.
In fact, someone has removed the hinges entirely, which allows (or forces,
depending on how you look at it) the seat to come completely off whenever
I need to access the storage compartment underneath. I will probably
be removing this rack sometime in the future. Of course, that means
losing the saddle bags as well, since the mounts are all integral.
Oh, well, the things do not add to the appearance of the bike anyway.
