New member of BMW MOA resurrecting 85 K100RS

I was thinking the same thing. I have had two on my K1200RS blow at different emergency stops. Both were front lines, and they were 10-12 yrs of age. With your bike in this easy working state, now is the time to go SS. Looking GOOD!

Thanks for the idea guys. I do want to do this upgrade but I am at a loss to really figure out the exact ones I need and where to get them. What do you guys recommend? Do most people run one down to the right caliper and pass one over the fender to the other? Ebay, Max BMW?

Now I have moved on to the guages. I have been having my daughters most of the week so I have not had time to work on the bike but I have started tearing apart both of my gauge clusters. What a mess I have going on on the kitchen table. Ah the joys of not having a wife. My kitchen table used to be my carb rebuild bench until my kids complained. I guess they will have to get over the gauges being on there for now.I have 2 sets of gauges so I can pick the best parts for the RS I am building. I was not happy with the broken gear indicator in the gauges so I decided to swap the good one I have to go in the set I will be using on this bike.
I then moved on to the spedo and found that both had bad gears so apart they came and I managed to get 1 good set for the spedo I will be calibrating this week.

Good set of gears installed and ready for calibration.
I also ordered a new set of gears. I cant believe how easy it is to roll back the miles on a K. I found that the 4L plastic piece was shorter than it should have been and glued in to the spot. I will have to get a new one of those. I am also planning on putting LED bulbs in the whole cluster. I ordered 20 off of ebay for $15. The bulbs for the turn signal are different and I already have LED's for those. I am not worried about hyper flashing because I still have incandescent bulbs in the signals.
I have one 9 screw cluster rear housing and one 6 screw. I will be using the 9 screw housing on the build bike. It also has 2 vents already in it so I wont have to drill any holes.

More work on the gauge cluster. i have the new gears ordered but I decided to put LED bulbs in and they finally got to my house today. They fit in 5 positions so I had to order another style for the rest. But I bet these will have the gauges look nice and at least they will work for the rest of my lifetime. So now I have to wait for the next batch of bulbs. Man it seams I am always waiting for parts with this thing. BTW I ordered 2 sets of spedo gears from odometergears.com. They were very helpful and knowledgeable and gave me 10 bucks off the second set of gears I ordered. i even got to talk directly to a human.

For the braided ss lines, Jerry Finley at Pirate's Lair can obtain Speiglers for nearly any bike. He specialized in the K1200RS when our bikes were new and has since (17 years now?) branched out to all the newer BMWs as well as many other brands. His page on the Speigler lines says to email him with your specific needs and he can likelly get it. It would be the entire kit most likely.

pirate@acelink.net

Your project is very interesting. It has been so long since I had one of those instrument clusters open.....

Thanks for the link, I have been having fun (frustrated) doing this bike. I am so used to the Japanese way of doing things it has taken some adjustment to the German thought process. I saw on another BMW parts site he was selling LED bulb set for $50 so I thought I could do better than that. I was surprised the bulbs I got would not fit in the slots, they were to large at the led cover. So I have ordered another type of LED bulb. Hope those fit. I will also be posting the results of using a signal generator to calibrate my spedo. I found a set of lines on another site but man the guy wants $200 + shipping for a set. I get them for my Suzuki for around $125 shipped. And I though HD stood for high dollar.

http://goodridge-uk.com/shop/en/bmw...andard-front-stainless-steel-bw1005-3fc-.html

hey, great to hear of another guy digging into the bike. I just purchased a 1985 K100rs. It is being shipped to me soon. I have no experience with this bike and plan on following your thread. Thanks for the insight and welcome. I had a r1200 gs as my only bmw experience. I am building a cafe racer so if you need any body work let me know. I am removing every thing but the tank. I look forward to learning more

You will have a good and trying time fixing up your bike. It is very rewarding though. I am very exited to see spring right around the corner. It was 17 above 0 yesterday when I left for work so its starting to warm up in WI.

The original K100RS won some design awards back in the early/mid 80's. Nice looking bikes. My favorite is the '87 with the motorsport paint scheme.

Pity you live so far away, I'd love to help someone on a project like that (or do it myself) You're having fun!

I would certainly welcome any and all help. I have another K100 I will be getting to after I am done with this one but I think that one will be a naked K100. Been a long time since I was able to work on the bike, between work and fixing the house we have in Florida I have not been home for around 3 weeks. I finally got home this morning and continued the work. I have been sitting on the rebuild kit for my fuel cap and I found some high quality submersible fuel line and a new fuel filter. I pulled the pump out and replaced all the fuel lines and checked the operation of the pump. I decided to use the pump from the low mile bike in my blue tank for this bike. I did a bench test and it runs and pumps nice and strong. So I don't think I will have any problems with it in the near future (fingers crossed)

The fuel cap did not leak as far as I knew but I put new seals in it anyway. It can't hurt right? The o-ring's were in there pretty good and I would up prying them out. The new ones went right in and I also had the chance to lube the return spring and clean the corrosion off the bottom of the key mechanism. Should be good for another 25 years now.


I did get the gas tank mounted up but forgot to take a picture of it. That will have to wait for next time. Now I have to finish the girlfriends Suzuki. Its running and all I need to do is get the heated grips on and the tank and side covers painted.

Since it go cold out again I decided to tackle a few other projects I wanted to address. I was not happy with how bright the tail light was while the bike was sitting there so since we have so much room in the sides I decided to add some lights. I originally purchased some off of Ebay but I was not happy with how small they were. So I went to the local parts store and low and behold they had what i was looking for. They weren't giving them away but I am happy with how they look.

Glad to read you added to the tail light. That is something many of us did 'back in the day' because of the real lack of illumination there, both on running as well as stopping. Keep up the good work! Very entertaining.

I think the new lights will really make me visible at least.


I also finally got all the LED bulbs for the gauges and got them installed. I got the small ones from a web site, superbrightled.com and I am hopeing they will never require replacing in my life time. They cost me #$1.39 a piece and you will need 8 of them and 2 of a twist in type. We will see how they look when I get the gauges back in the bike.

I think I will be adding some strip lights on the mud flap to increase the visibility of the stop light but I am happy with whats been done for now.

I do have a set of viable spedo gears that I wont be using so if anyone needs a set of original ones I have them and I am willing to sell them. I just put new in my spedos. If your interested in the gears send me a PM

Hey Bruce, I saw those lights at TrakAuto too - did you wire them in to the running rear light or brake lights? How did you do the wiring?

Thanks!

I have not wired them in yet. I was planning on soldering the leads together and then to the clips for the running brake light. I want them to remain removable. I was planning on adding strip lights down the rear fender to make the brake light more visible and they are not conspicuous when they are off. I have been kicking around the idea of replacing the incandescent stop bulb with a LED one that flashes. I have a flashing LED in a few of my other bikes and it really draws attention to it.

bruced737 said:

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i think i will be adding some strip lights on the mud flap to increase the visibility of the stop light but i am happy with whats been done for now.

I do have a set of viable spedo gears that i wont be using so if anyone needs a set of original ones i have them and i am willing to sell them. I just put new in my spedos. If your interested in the gears send me a pm
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pm sent

rzwartus said:

Pity you live so far away, I'd love to help someone on a project like that (or do it myself) You're having fun!

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I am a little closer in Jacksonville and have one in pieces right now.