The_Veg
D'OH!
My first BMW- which was also my first motorcycle- was given to me by a friend almost five years ago. He was not mechanically inclined by nature, and had had enough of the thing. I had not seen my friend in six months and we were talking as he was about to get into his new car and drive off. I just offhand happened to ask if he still had his motorcycle.
Six months before that conversation, he had been riding around on a K100RT. Even though I had yet to be a motorcyclist, I knew what it was- I was an avid car magazine reader back in the 1980s when BMW advertised the K100 in Road & Track and/or Car & Driver.
He said he did still have it, but that he was thinking of giving it to one of those charities that take old vehicles. The gears in my head never turned faster! I knew instantly that that path would be a slow ride to the junkyard for that poor old bike. I said that if it was all the same to him, I'd be glad to take it. "Okay," he said with a shrug after only about a quarter-second of thought.
A few days later I went to see the bike. It was on a trailer, uncovered, under a tree. He told me it had been there like that for about 18 months. The poor thing looked *SO* sad! A few days after that, he delivered it to my place. I had luckily moved into an apartment with a garage only three months before this. Both stands were broken, so he leaned it against the wall and I think I spent the rest of the afternoon just admiring it. Wow, I now own a motorcycle!
But that was the easy part. My immediate task-list was to clean it up, change the fluids, and see if it would start. But the more I removed to get clean, the further I felt I had to go to do it right. I soon had the bike stripped to the frame. I spent about nine months on refurbishing the old Brick, and somewhere in there I took MSF. My prior riding experience was limited to a neighbour kid's QA50 back when I was already way too big for such a tiny little minibike. Once the K was running, I spent a lot of time in the parking lot at the apartments practising what I'd learned at MSF. The course had me on a 125cc Honda, and now I was jumping to a bike that weighed three times as much and had eight times the displacement. Luckily The Brick was quite forgiving and the lessons transferred easily. I rode that bike for less than two years before I lowsided it one day on slippery pavement. The repairs to the bodywork looked so expensive that I decided to make it a sporty nekkid bike, kind of a big hulky cafe-racer if you can imagine that. But during that work it developed some problems that proved impractical to repair and I sold it to a clubmate who mumbled something about using it for some kind of sidecar project or something.
And that was the last I ever saw of that old Brick.
Six months before that conversation, he had been riding around on a K100RT. Even though I had yet to be a motorcyclist, I knew what it was- I was an avid car magazine reader back in the 1980s when BMW advertised the K100 in Road & Track and/or Car & Driver.
He said he did still have it, but that he was thinking of giving it to one of those charities that take old vehicles. The gears in my head never turned faster! I knew instantly that that path would be a slow ride to the junkyard for that poor old bike. I said that if it was all the same to him, I'd be glad to take it. "Okay," he said with a shrug after only about a quarter-second of thought.
A few days later I went to see the bike. It was on a trailer, uncovered, under a tree. He told me it had been there like that for about 18 months. The poor thing looked *SO* sad! A few days after that, he delivered it to my place. I had luckily moved into an apartment with a garage only three months before this. Both stands were broken, so he leaned it against the wall and I think I spent the rest of the afternoon just admiring it. Wow, I now own a motorcycle!
But that was the easy part. My immediate task-list was to clean it up, change the fluids, and see if it would start. But the more I removed to get clean, the further I felt I had to go to do it right. I soon had the bike stripped to the frame. I spent about nine months on refurbishing the old Brick, and somewhere in there I took MSF. My prior riding experience was limited to a neighbour kid's QA50 back when I was already way too big for such a tiny little minibike. Once the K was running, I spent a lot of time in the parking lot at the apartments practising what I'd learned at MSF. The course had me on a 125cc Honda, and now I was jumping to a bike that weighed three times as much and had eight times the displacement. Luckily The Brick was quite forgiving and the lessons transferred easily. I rode that bike for less than two years before I lowsided it one day on slippery pavement. The repairs to the bodywork looked so expensive that I decided to make it a sporty nekkid bike, kind of a big hulky cafe-racer if you can imagine that. But during that work it developed some problems that proved impractical to repair and I sold it to a clubmate who mumbled something about using it for some kind of sidecar project or something.
And that was the last I ever saw of that old Brick.
