K75 Downshifting Issue '93

Greg,
I understand your point. My retirement became official today ! For about the last three months I have been reevaluating some of my spending habits. I just don't get a lot of joy out of working on these things. It's time I could spend doing something (?) else.

Ace, congratulations on your retirement! Here's to more riding time.

Thanks Greg. I've got a lot of projects around the house and some travel plans (on the bikes, etc.). I'll be in Houston the last weekend in Feb. Maybe we could meet up and figure out how these bikes work.

Looking forward to meeting you in Houston!

I own a 1993 K75RT.
I also own my own business, a very small mom and pop hardware store. I work on my bikes in the basement of the store.
I started the spline lube job at 8:15 on a Saturday morning and kept running upstairs to wait on customers.
I did the job, and had it back on the road about 9:00PM.
This WAS my second time doing the job. The first time took much longer.
Tom

If you have any tool sense, meaning you don't break of little bolts all the time ect. than you can get thru this, if you are puzzled or not sure, stop and ask, it is very rewarding to put her back together, and know whats in there.

good luck

The reason I say Haynes and Clymer (as a tutorial) is that they explain things differently and use different photos and illustrations. Where one loses you the other may be just the clue you need.

Both of those manuals are straightforward when it comes to the transmission removal part. I would read through the manual you have and see what questions you have. Then feel free to PM me.

Hi, Greg,
I have a '95 K75RTP with 31k miles, just about time for a spline lube! I have 7 days off from the mine (I work in the copper mine in Morenci, AZ) starting 24 Feb. Ride your K75 here to El Paso and we'll do both of them. I've done it a couple of times (both times a K75 with ABS), but it helps to have someone else available for help when necessary. Maybe we could cajole Paul to come to El Paso for tutoring help. All this assumes I can get the plumbing fixed and the garage dried out. My neighbor (I was in Morenci at work) shut off my water at the street when he noticed water coming out from under my garage doors. This was just after El Paso had temperatures approaching zero (F)! I found a water valve for the washer on the floor and an open copper pipe where the valve had resided. I HAVEN'T yet found a plumber!

Hi Phil, great to hear from you again! Did you get the engine protection bars installed yet? I put an ad on the local BMW yahoo! group for an informal pizza and drinks get together but that attracted only inexperienced folks like myself, which would have been fun but we would still have needed an experienced guy to direct things. Experience never volunteered.

The local BMW club president did respond to the ad, but he was mainly interested in promoting the club membership, and I am a already a member. He let me know that there are 2 tech days per year, and he thought a spline lube would jeopardize the Spring tech day schedule.

So to make a long story longer, I wimped out and took the bike to a local shop. Otherwise I would be on the way to El Paso. Enjoyed meeting you there, and was sorry we didn't get more time to visit.

Greg - don't feel bad, I also wimped out and took mine to my local guy. Turns out, I'm glad I did. My entire clutch plate was ruined, frozen together and needed replacement. This would likely have been over my head, considering I've never gone further than changing my oil! I'll get in there eventually...

Post Mordem

The K75 is back at home after the clutch spline lube. It is shifting much better than when it went in, overall I am pleased with the results, despite the fact that I did not get to see/participate in the effort.

I have a question for the experts, though. My conception of the work was to remove the rear wheel, drive shaft and then clean and lube the splines. Is the clutch cable removed from the clutch in this operation? They said that the clutch plate was removed and inspected during the work.

The repair listed about $100 in parts. While the price of the parts strikes me as reasonable based on a comparison on the internet (not great, never lowest, but they had the parts and sold 'em to me). The question is whether some of these parts needed replacing.

The parts are:
1) 6 ea clutch star washer - no questions about this (21211242377)
2) 3 ea. Rubber Mount, Alternator (12311464877)
3) 1 ea. boot at clutch rod (23131338731)
4) 1 ea. Exhaust gasket - no questions about this (18121457142)
5) 2 ea. Clutch Lever bushing (32721232662)
6) 1 ea. Clutch Lever bushing washer (32721230871)

More for my education than anything else. Appreciate the help.

gregfuess said:

The K75 is back at home after the clutch spline lube. It is shifting much better than when it went in, overall I am pleased with the results, despite the fact that I did not get to see/participate in the effort.

I have a question for the experts, though. My conception of the work was to remove the rear wheel, drive shaft and then clean and lube the splines. Is the clutch cable removed from the clutch in this operation? They said that the clutch plate was removed and inspected during the work.

Click to expand...

No - it's considerably more then that. To do the clutch splines you must remove the transmission. Removing the transmission is a rather large job (and as others pointed out - easier to do with two people.. mostly because you can take it apart without as much disassembly..) It involved removing the wheel, rear-drive, shock mounts, rear brake, side-plates, battery, the starter, driveshaft and in your case they R&R'd the alternator (a good thing..)

I would expect the dealer to charge 2 hours or so of labor, perhaps a bit more (I've done it in 45 minutes - but that was with a good experienced wrench helping, and I was really in practice - it was the 3rd time in a week..) A good mechanic working alone will likely take 2-3 hours to complete the job.

The repair listed about $100 in parts. While the price of the parts strikes me as reasonable based on a comparison on the internet (not great, never lowest, but they had the parts and sold 'em to me). The question is whether some of these parts needed replacing.

The parts are:
1) 6 ea clutch star washer - no questions about this (21211242377)
2) 3 ea. Rubber Mount, Alternator (12311464877)
3) 1 ea. boot at clutch rod (23131338731)
4) 1 ea. Exhaust gasket - no questions about this (18121457142)
5) 2 ea. Clutch Lever bushing (32721232662)
6) 1 ea. Clutch Lever bushing washer (32721230871)

More for my education than anything else. Appreciate the help.

Click to expand...

Looks like a reasonable list to me. The bushing for the clutch lever is cheap and a good thing to replace once in a while - the rubber bits are all nearing 20 years old and owe you nothing. I wouldn't dicker over that list of parts.

Thanks Don, appreciate your enlightenment. The question for for my education, no bone to pick with the shop. I just couldn't figure out why the clutch lever was being messed with, and the alternator. Sounds like two things I should be glad they did address.

The labor was $300, which I would assume is about 4 hours, for the Houston market. While I do not know how many people participated in the work, the labor is consistent with what the shop quoted before I brought it in.

gregfuess said:

Thanks Don, appreciate your enlightenment. The question for for my education, no bone to pick with the shop. I just couldn't figure out why the clutch lever was being messed with, and the alternator. Sounds like two things I should be glad they did address.

The labor was $300, which I would assume is about 4 hours, for the Houston market. While I do not know how many people participated in the work, the labor is consistent with what the shop quoted before I brought it in.

Click to expand...

When they disconnected the clutch lever they probably noticed some wobble in the lever - hence the bushing. And the boot would have been loose to do that bushing. I expect when they pulled the alternator they found the rubber cush drive pieces hard and maybe cracking - thus those pieces.

I say bravo for a good shop that caught and took care of things others might have blown off and ignored.

No kidding, those "rubber mounts" (aka monkeynutz) are a pain to get to and can not only cause a real racket when they go bad by either cracking or turning to mud, they can lead to more expensive things breaking.

Nice to see a shop that still knows how to properly work on older K bikes - to be honest, sounds like you got a great deal.

Appreciate all the good words about the shop, and your support for the work they did on my bike. The Significant Other, my little sister (on an identical 1995 Arctic Silver K75), and two friends are headed out on a short trip to Port Aransas, TX to see the Whooping Cranes, then on to Big Bend National Park for some camping and general good times.

We are anticipating lots of fun, and the confidence in the bikes helps tremendously. I am truly happy to be a part of this organization.

I think that it would be worthwhile to specifically name the Houston shop that did the work on this K75S. Shops that do good work should be named as should those that do poor work.

Great idea, Robsmoto, thanks for that. The shop is in Houston, TX at

MPH Cycles
16510 Park Row
Houston Texas 77084

telephone: (281) 647-6557
Toll Free:- 1-866-746-1182

http://www.mphcycles.com/index.php

Mike owns the place, but I didn't think to ask his last name, though I am pretty sure it starts with an H. He came highly recommended by the Houston BMW forum on the yahoo! groups. I add my recommendation to that list.

From his webite, they apparently work on cars as well.