Jonny's BMW project..

[Jonny81191]

So the other week I got one of my dream vehicles. I've wanted one of these since I saw them on the mountain passes of the Alps as a child, so when the opportunity to own one for next to nothing came up, I had to go for it. 



It's a 2002 BMW R1150GS, and it's brilliant

There's a fair few issues I needed to address, the first being the fact that I barely fit on it, it's a big bike. I looked at the options of lowering it a bit, then decided to get stuck in modifying the seat. I pulled the cover off, and trimmed about 2" of foam off the top, refitted the cover and tried it on. Whilst it's not as low as I'd like, it's as low as it's going to get without suspension mods, and for now I'm happy. I'll be on the lookout for some thick soled boots to make life a bit easier.

Next on the list was a fairly big oil leak that sprayed all over your legs when riding. New oil lines and a seal kit should fix this, nice and easy. 

Since I won't be able to ride this until I can do my direct access licence once I'm 24 in November, I've decided a bit of light restoration is in order while I'm fixing the problems. The pannier rack was very rusty, so I undid 4 bolts, and snapped or drilled the rest. Fortunately, nothing that bolts into the frame broke so I'll probably replace the platform the rack bolts to. There's corrosion all over the engine, which has been painted over so I'll need to get the wire brush out and hit it with the silver hammerite to stop it getting worse. The frame, while solid, is also going to get a similar treatment but I'm only doing the accessible bits for now, it's not bad enough to warrant taking the whole bike apart.




The fuel tank isn't in the best condition, it's been patched up several times over the years and now has a dent in it after I managed to drop the bike playing with the seat. Not best pleased, but I figure it's inevitable and there's worse places to drop it than the back garden.  I'm a bit unsure what to do with the leaks, it's currently holding fuel so I might leave it and carry some tank repair in case.  



The front struts have been leaking quite badly so I've got a seal kit for those, hopefully they won't need a full rebuild as I suspect it's just the top seal gone. The other problem on the front is the aluminium hub has worn down so the discs are sitting very close to the caliper on the inner edge. I'm going to look into spacing the disk back out with some shims against the hub. As it's got floating disks I can't see any issue with spacing them out a bit but I'm unsure yet as to whether I'll just go for a replacement hub. 

That's all for now folks, I'll no doubt find more issues as I go but for now I just want to get it roadworthy!