• Anything worth doing is worth overdoing - or, Tales of Wrenching Excess
• Stuff you can steal from the kitchen
• The "choke" lever
• Favourite local roads
• More favourite roads
• Four money-saving service tips
• Winter Storage
• The annual service
• Roller bearing crankshaft service (updated Dec 2000)
• Anti-lock Brakes - Fact and Fantasy
• The pre-ride check
• Tire care
• Silicone sealant caution

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing - or, Tales of Wrenching Excess

Battery acid level. This should be simple enough, as the minimum and maximum levels are marked on the side of the battery. If overfilled, battery acid can leak out the caps and the overflow tubes and do a bunch of damage to an otherwise perfectly nice motorcycle. I know exactly how this happens, though: every battery in every General Motors vehicle ever built used to have "Fill to bottom of cap" printed on it (or words to that effect - I don't remember exactly). When you do that to one of our batteries, it is very much overfull. The other problem is that sometimes it isn't exactly easy to see the acid level through the battery casing. Here's a cheap tip for that: Take a popsicle stick and make a pencil mark 6mm from the end and another one at 14. (1/4 inch and 9/16 for those clinging to the Imperial system along with the two nations still resisting: the United States and Botswana). You now have a dipstick to insert through the filler cap. Rest it gently on the plates, and the acid level should be between the two marks. If necessary, top up (distilled water only, please). When you're done, throw out the "dipstick" - that way you can eat another popsicle next time. Sadly, I don't think the stick from a Haagen-Dazs ice cream bar will fit into the little holes in the top of the battery.

Tire pressures. Underinflation is bad, but overinflation is too. Traction is reduced, the ride becomes harsh, and weird wear patterns can develop. The number on the side of the tire is NOT the correct inflation pressure for your bike; it is the maximum allowable pressure for the tire regardless of what motorcycle it is installed on. The right numbers for your bike are printed in your owner's manual as well as on a sticker on the bike - usually under the seat.

Oil level. Don't forget the correct procedure for checking the oil in your bike: Four-valve Boxer owners must allow time for the oil to drain down from the cooler into the sump, or the level will appear to be low when it really is not. The ideal procedure is to check the oil first thing in the morning, before starting the bike. The correct level is ANYWHERE in the red circle on the sight glass; add oil only when the level reaches the bottom of the circle. F-series bikes, on the other hand, should be checked within an hour after the bike has been ridden to be sure that oil hasn't drained out of the tank into the engine, giving a falsely low reading.

Fastener torque. Tight is good, so really tight is really good, right? Wrong. Overtorqued bolts and nuts, even if they do not break, can still cause damage. For example: drain threads can be stripped; flanges can be warped; axle and fork clamps can be distorted so parts can no longer be removed or worse yet the clamp breaks (now or later!); and so on. If you're working on your own bike you should have a service manual and a torque wrench. And let me pass on this old mechanics' truism: "More leaks are caused than cured by tightening".

Stuff you can steal from the kitchen

Cutlery trays: These are the Rubbermaid thingies with cutouts shaped like spoons, knives, forks, etc. intended for organizing kitchen drawers. They make great trays for carrying tools from the toolbox to the job and back, and have some room to collect nuts and bolts from whatever you're working on.

Muffin tins: Great storage for nuts/bolts/whatever, available in different sizes, too! I use them to group parts in a way that seems logical to me, as a memory aid for re-installation. For instance, I'll put all the fasteners for a bike's lower fairing in one cup, everything for the windshield in another, and so on.

Baking tins: For bigger stuff that won't fit in the Jumbo muffin tins. Also good for catching small amounts of liquid.

Cookie trays: Large and shallow, these are good drip-catchers to place under those, uh, "unrestored" bikes.

Scotch-Brite: One of the best-kept secrets around, this is THE stuff for final cleaning of gasket surfaces before reassembly. Unlike a scraper, Scotch-brite won't scratch or remove any metal, but it will provide the clean-enough-to-eat-off (there's that kitchen connection, again) surface needed for a leak-free assembly. Only the real, 3-M brand pads are worth buying, though.

Turkey baster: These rubber-bulb gizmos are great for topping-off batteries with distilled water, sucking out old coolant from overflow bottles, and even basting turkeys, I suppose. Just remember to wash it out between jobs.

Plastic dish pan: Meant to fit into a sink so the family Wedgewood doesn't get chipped, dish pans fit nicely under a bike for draining oil and coolant into.

Bottle-washing brush: Available in various sizes, these are handy in the parts-washer for scrubbing out bolt-holes, valve guides, fork tubes, or anything that resembles a hole that you can't get your hand into. Also good in the bike-wash bucket for cleaning around wheel spokes, cylinder fins and the like.

Pipe cleaners: How come people who have never smoked a pipe in their lives have boxes of these things? Anyway, they're just the ticket for cleaning out oil passages in engine blocks. Talented people can twist them together to make a cute toy horse; the rest of us claim we were trying to make a spider....

Of course, once you're done with this stuff in the garage it may no longer be welcomed back into the kitchen. Come to think of it, you might not be either.

The "choke" lever

Okay, hopefully without getting into too much detail, here's the story: For a number of reasons, your bike needs more fuel mixed with the air (called a "richer mixture") to start and run while the engine is cold. This is where the choke comes in. Operating the choke lever richens the mixture and usually also opens the throttle a tiny bit to help everything along. As the engine warms up, less enrichment is required and the choke lever can be gradually rotated back to the Off position. Turn the choke off too soon, and the engine "leans out" and dies. Leave it on too long, and the engine "floods" and - you guessed it - dies. So when the engine is partly warmed up, there will be an optimum mid-point setting of the choke control where the engine will idle fastest and most smoothly. This not-yet-warm-enough-to-run-without-the-choke time is when the rider has the most trouble and leads to this sort of exchange:

Customer: "What's wrong with my bike? When it's warm/warming up, it slows down/dies if I turn the choke on full."
Dealer: "Nothing! That’s what it’s supposed to do."
Customer: Grumble.

The "choke" lever on fuel-injected bikes is a fast-idle control only; the job of fiddling with the mixture is handled by the computer. No flooding can happen by leaving this control on but it is needed to keep the engine from stalling when cold (see "just ride it" advice above!). The fast idle function is being taken over by the computer, too, as time goes on - as on the K1200RS and LT and the new F-series.

Favourite local roads

More favourite roads

-County Rd. 18 and 3 from Fergus to Hwy. 9 at Orangeville.
-County Rd. 16 to bypass Orangeville.
-County Rd. 7 and 1 through Loretto and Beeton, then down Hwy 27 to Bond Head.
-Hwy. 88 to cross "The Four Hundred". Follow the signs for Holland Landing and then Sharon, to end up on County Road 13.
-Follow 13 to Mount Albert, then go south on 30 to 8 through Uxbridge to Port Perry.

There you are - 20 minutes north of Oshawa and only about 15 kilometres of highway in the whole trip.

Four money-saving ideas for do-it-yourself service.

1. Buy (and use) a good torque wrench. There is a proper torque for each fastener on your bike listed in the repair manual. Too much and things can break (and fall off), too little and they can come loose (ditto). We do a nice business from torque-related problems, like repairing stripped threads and replacing fork legs where the axle clamp has been broken off. The "clicker" type wrenches are handy, but cheap examples are worse than useless. For a low-priced wrench, I recommend the beam-and-pointer style; even quite inexpensive ones can be reasonably accurate.

2. Replace crush washers every time you change fluids. See "stripped drain plugs", above! Crush washers are meant to be used only once because they get, well, crushed.

3. If all else fails, remove the motorcycle. If you get into a job you're not equipped for, take the part off the bike and bring it to us. You get to be involved in the work, and save the labour to remove and replace the offending part. Tire replacement, wheel bearings, carburetors (for the adventurous!) and final drive work are good candidates. Just make sure you clean the appropriate area of the bike thoroughly before removing the part. This keeps dirt out of the opening you have just created and saves you money on shop time. And leads to the last tip:

4. Clean the bike really well now and then. I mean everywhere, not just the painted bits. Dirt can hide problems and makes the bike hard to do good work on.

Winter Storage

The enemies here are deterioration of the battery and the effects of condensation on the rest of the machine.

Battery: A battery loses up to 1% of its charge in a day just sitting there, more if your bike has a clock. To prevent damage to the battery from sulfation, it should be kept fully charged. If you have a BMW accessory socket on the bike (all the current models come standard with them), you can charge the battery through the socket: the Battery Tender By BMW will plug into the socket and can be left on all winter (the full-size model includes alligator clips for generic use on cars, riding mowers, and other lesser machinery). Otherwise, make sure the battery is fully charged when you quit riding (this means putting it on a charger if you've been making short trips) and recharge the battery at least every other month. Use an automatic charger (such as the Battery Tender) or charge for 10 hours at 1/10th of the battery's capacity. For example, a 30 amp-hour battery should be charged at 3 amps. It's not really necessary to remove the battery from the bike, but in any case make sure it's topped up with distilled water.

Condensation: Unless you have heated storage, the daily temperature changes over the course of the winter make your bike "sweat" when it's colder than the surrounding damp air. This happens both outside the bike and inside. The engine, gearbox, etc. are all vented so water accumulates there over time. BMW recommends changing the engine, gearbox, swingarm and final drive oils in the fall. This eliminates any moisture to start with as well as the corrosive acids that form in used engine oil. These fluids do not have to be changed again in the spring unless the bike is stored for more than 6 months, but the fork oil should be done in the spring along with the brake fluid.

The fuel tank should be full over the winter (less exposed inner surface for condensation). Fuel stabilizer - we sell "Stabil" brand - is effective at preventing fuel system problems. Follow the maker's recommendations on the package for dosage. A good plan is to ride to your local gas station and add the stabilizer there when you fill the tank so it can mix on your last ride home of the season. On 2-valve Boxers, (especially if Stabil is not used) remove the float bowls, make sure your petcocks are off, and dump the gas in your snow blower so it won't form varnish as it evapourates in the carbs. K-model owners should check that their coolant is safe down to -26 degrees C.

Condensation on the outside of the bike is fought by putting it away clean so dirt doesn't hold the moisture in. If you feel you must, the shiny stuff (chrome, plated fasteners, polished aluminum) can be protected by wiping on, with a cloth, a light coat of WD40. If you do this be careful not to get any on the tires or paintwork and again the bike must be absolutely clean first. A good wax job on the bodywork doesn't hurt, and makes the bike easier to wash in the spring.

I hope this helps to answer some of your questions regarding putting your bike away for the season. If you read the next article, you may see that it can be convenient to combine your winter storage requirements with an annual service.

The annual service

There is a small problem with the recommended maintenance schedule, however. Especially now that all new BMW motorcycles have 10,000 km between service intervals, the average rider may not reach even one scheduled service in a season. After changing a few fluids for winter storage, it is easy enough to get off the service schedule because it "was just done". To help out, when BMW released the service schedules and checklists for the new 4-valve boxer, they included an "Annual Service" to be done in years when no major service is required, but not instead of one. This makes a good winter storage procedure, whether done in the spring or the fall. I've gone through the list to make up a combined list that can be used for K- or R-series bikes:

-Change engine oil, renew oil filter					
Change oils in:					
	-gearbox			 	  	
	-swingarm (some R only)				 
	-rear wheel drive		   	  	
	-telescopic fork		 		 
-Change brake fluid			   	 	
-Change coolant at least every two years (K only)			   	  	
-Grease sidestand, centrestand, and clutch cable nipples		   		
-Check battery acid level, top up with distilled water if				
   necessary					
-Clean and grease battery
   terminals if necessary
-Check wheel and tire condition, tire pressures
-Check torque of rear wheel bolts, centre and side stands
-Check for error codes (Motronic only)
-Check all lights including instrument, warning lights
-Road test:  Final inspection and safety checks for proper 
   operation and adjustment of Clutch, Gearchange, Steering,
   Front and Rear Brakes and ABS
-Check idle speed and CO value, adjust if necessary

Roller bearing crankshaft service

These crankshafts were very durable as long as the oil filters were serviced at the recommended intervals. What's that you say? Those bikes didn't have oil filters? Precisely! What they did have, and again this was common practice, was a device called a "slinger" that was mounted on the crankshaft cheek, next to each big-end bearing. The slingers were made of sheet metal and performed the dual functions of centrifugally separating the sludge and metallic wear particles out of the engine oil and of feeding clean oil to the connecting rod big-end bearings. The Achilles' heel of this system is that the crud in the slinger can eventually build up to the point where it blocks the oil feed to the big-ends, resulting in nasty rattling noises from the engine and possible complete seizure or crankshaft breakage. Hence, the recommended "oil filter" or slinger service interval of 20,000 miles. These engines should be stripped at that interval to clean out or replace the slingers. This is a lot of work and seems like an outrageous requirement today, but remember these were the "good old days" when most motorcycles didn't even last 20,000 miles and would need valve and ring work 2 or 3 times if they did.

If you have one of these bikes and ride it even occasionally, you should be aware of this need for service. It's not inexpensive, but a good original crankshaft is worth preserving. By the way, no amount of oil changes or miracle additives can avoid the build-up in the slingers. Put this on the same list with death and taxes.

Year 2000 update: We no longer know of any reputable rebuilders experienced in BMW roller bearing crankshafts. The company we used for many years did the work more as a hobby than a money-earning proposition, and has discontinued the service to concentrate on their core business of precision toolmaking. We are continuing to look for a new supplier.

Shameless self-promotion time: we can perform the entire overhaul of these engines in-house. We may be the only dealer in Canada doing this - parts availability is sometimes a problem and one way or another the bill the customer sees never seems to quite reflect the number of hours involved in the job. However, there is a sense of accomplishment in completing one of these engines - they really are jewel-like in the sense that a fine watch is jewelry. The bike's owner too, shares in the enjoyment of the vintage motorcycling experience with a machine running to its capability and with the quality of the year in which it was built.

Anti-lock Brakes - Fact and Fantasy

The Capital Punishment for Speeding Proposal:
The author of this hypothesis states that "If you get into a situation where you need ABS, you were going too fast anyway."

The Principle of Chevrolet Verisimilitude:
This is a personal favourite, and goes something like: "I have ABS on my pickup truck and I don't like it, so I know I won't like it on a bike." I can't say I much like the way trucks lean in corners, either, but leaning is a Good Thing on a bike. How long is it going to take Ford to come up with a decent sidestand for the F150, anyway?

If You don't Use It, You'll Lose It:
The concern here is that the owner of ABS will forget how to brake properly, because the electronics will be doing all the work all the time. Forgotten here is that ABS does nothing until the point at which traction is lost, and is thus the best possible tool for learning to brake to the limit because it allows you to explore the edge of traction without paying the consequences for going over that edge.

There is probably nothing on earth that comes without good and bad points. We recognize that ABS has one major shortcoming: you have to pay for it. For this reason, we will be bringing in one or two R1100 series bikes without ABS this year. After all, if the buyer is deciding between a BMW model and something by an Other Brand, ABS may not be an issue because it simply is not available on the other bike. Also, if the extra cost of ABS means the difference between a getting on a new BMW with first-rate handling and excellent conventional brakes or riding the old Whizzer for another year, which really is the safer choice?

This is a change in philosophy for us, because in the past we have been ordering ABS on bikes where it was not standard equipment. This was because we believed then that it was always in the customer's best interest, not for the extra few dollars we make on the option - and it is just a few dollars.

As for any technical or performance drawbacks to antilock brakes, though, I would give credibility to the opinion of someone who actually owns them and has ridden with them for a while. On a motorcycle.

For more on ABS, check out the January '96 issue of Cycle World magazine. A cover feature is called "Panic Stop Shootout" and compares ABS with conventional and linked braking systems. Unlike the ADAC tests from Germany which were covered in these pages some time ago, Cycle World tested only in the dry, and on a nice, grippy racetrack. Anyway, to let them have their say:

Conclusions? It's hard to argue with a modern anti-lock brake system.....Add water or sand to the road surface, and the anti-lock system would look better yet.

The pre-ride check

Every bike ever sold probably has a pre-ride check outlined in the owners manual. The check list for a bike from the vintage era looks more like a 15,000 kilometer service for a modern bike, and must have taken hours to perform. Even then, it appears that it wasn't unusual for a carefully prepared machine to shed parts, shower its' owner in hot Castrol and just generally act ungrateful in one of the imaginative ways that only inert machinery can dream up. The take-it-for-granted reliability of a modern BMW makes it all to easy to skip the daily check, yet there are some things that the owner should look at periodically. I'm not talking major mechanical inspections, mind you, just things that may crop up between scheduled services when the bike is thoroughly inspected to BMW's standards. Once a week should be plenty if you're commuting to work and getting out for evening rides, although no-one is going to object if you check your tires before every ride. On a tour, this check really should be done daily. Anyway, here's my list. Like all free advice, it's worth every penny:

ENGINE OIL.
What can I say? Check it, add some if necessary.

TIRES.
I can't emphasize this enough. Check your tires, and not just the pressures. The bike is already on the centrestand from checking the oil. Give both wheels a spin. Sight down each side of the rim while it's turning and look for dents in the rim. Check the tread depth; the absolute minimum you should be riding with is 2 mm front and rear. If you've got a quarter you can measure this; the little dots on either side of the word CANADA are 2mm in from the edge. Push the quarter into a tread groove at this point - if you can see the dot you have less than 2 mm of tread. Be sure to check the tread in the middle of the tire, at several spots all the way around; part of the tire may be a lot thinner than the rest. While you're at it, give each tire one full, slow turn and look for cuts or bits of glass, nails, etc. Start and stop at the valve stem and you won't go around too many times! K models sit with a fair bit of weight on the front wheel, but it's easy enough to turn the wheel if you face the bike and pull up towards you on the cast spokes inside the rim, so the wheel rotates backwards.

LIGHTS.
Again, pretty simple. Check high and low beams, turnsignals, taillight, check that both brakes operate the brakelight. I include the horn in this check and check the instrument lighting and all the warning lights.

REAR SHOCK PRELOAD.
If you're taking a passenger or luggage, adjust the shock to suit.

OTHER STUFF.
Some quick visual checks: Brake fluid and coolant (K models) levels can be seen through their sight glasses. Make a conscious check of the freeplay in the brake levers and clutch lever. I know you use these all the time when you're riding, but that's my point - any changes here may be so gradual that you don't notice them. That's it. A ten minute check, and go riding. Hope to see you out there.

Tire Care

"So you got a flat? Well, how 'bout that!" - Dr. Frankenfurter.

Tires don't require a lot of maintenance. After all, they don't have any moving parts and you don't even have to change the air once a year. Just keep them properly inflated and keep an eye on their condition and they're happy. A few pointers might be useful, though.

PRESSURE.
Your tire pressures really should be checked before every ride, but once a week at least. Compared to a car tire, a motorcycle tire has a much smaller volume of air inside, and probably a greater rate of leakage since it has the same air valve and a larger diameter bead to seal against the wheel (When was the last time you saw a 19-inch wheel on a car?). Because of the small volume a little air loss means a big drop in pressure. This shows when you check the tires on your bike, and the little psssstt of air when you put the gauge on drops the pressure a pound and a half. Use the same gauge on your car and see how much the pressure drops. Now, I'm not saying that a bike tire should leak so much that it needs air added every day - if it does there's something wrong - but I like the daily check because I've found flats about to happen when checking my tires: either by finding something stuck in the tread or because the pressure had dropped more than a couple of pounds.

By the way, do you own an accurate tire gauge? Are you sure? At the A.R.T. school last fall, we were advised to check and adjust our tire pressures before going out on the track. I was impressed to see that most people carried gauges on their bikes. The surprise came when we somehow got to comparing gauges and found as much as 8 psi difference between gauges! You don't have to spend a lot on a tire gauge; the pencil type is fine and probably has the most rugged construction. We carry a few here from Snap-On Tools that sell for about thirteen bucks.

Okay, you're going to check your tires. How much pressure should they have? Well, BMW's recommendation is on a sticker under the seat, taking into account luggage, speed, and whether you're carrying a passenger. They've done a lot more tire testing than any one person I know and their goal is to provide the best roadholding and braking performance - NOT the longest tire life or the greatest protection of the rim against road hazards - so let's use the pressures they've found to be best. The trouble is, the numbers on the sticker make little sense to most of us because the pressures are given in "bars". Well, I don't mind going to a bar now and again, but what's that got to do with tires? What they're talking about is a standard barometric pressure (thus "bar") of almost exactly 14.5 pounds per square inch (psi). So if you're supposed to inflate your tires to 2.5 bar, thats 2.5 x 14.5 = 36.25 psi. If you are politically correct in terms of units of measure and know whether 11 litres/100 km is good gas mileage and whether it will hurt if you get hit by a force of ten Newtons, then for you a bar equals a hundred kiloPascals. By the way, remember that these are "cold" pressures, that is, before riding the bike more than a couple of miles.

If the tires on your bike are of a significantly different construction than the type originally fitted to the bike (for instance, a vintage bike for which the original tires are no longer available or desirable), then the pressure recommendations under the seat are out of date, too. Modern tires generally require higher pressures because of their more rigid construction. What you can do here is run the same test racers do: Set the (cold) tires to where you think they should be, say 34 psi front and 38 psi rear. Now go for a ride of at least half an hour at your normal speeds and normal loading for the bike. Stop and check the tire pressures; they should each increase about 10%. This would be about 37 front and 42 rear. The idea here is that the tires are flexible enough to warm the rubber. The air inside also warms up, and this can be measured as an increase in pressure. Too little increase means the tires aren't warming up and won't give good traction ; too much means the tires are getting too warm which reduces tread life and in extreme cases may damage the tire. In our example, say the front tire warms up from 34 psi to 35 psi; we wanted a 3 psi increase and only got two. Next time, try 30 in the front tire and see if it goes up to 33. You get the idea. You might try this if you need excuses to go for a ride: "Sorry, dear, I was really looking forward to cutting the grass but I haven't finished my tire testing program yet."

CONDITION.
Of course you want to keep an eye on the tread depth, which should be no less than two millimetres at any point on the tire. Look also for wear unusual wear patterns which may indicate suspension or chassis problems, improper inflation, or a tire out of balance. Check the sidewalls for cracking as well as cracking between the tread blocks. Any cracking is too much, really. I don't like to see any tires on a bike that are more than four years old and even that may be conservative; I've seen two years recommended as the limit in the bike press. For this reason we are careful to rotate our tire stock and not order in too great a quantity, even though the distributor gives a discount for larger orders.

Silicone sealant caution

People with catalytic-converter equipped bikes should be sure that the sealant they use is "catalyst friendly". This is probably no longer an issue with any sealant intended for automotive use, but was a significant problem in the early days of catalysts on cars.

Another problem, more annoying than serious, is the time it takes to remove this stuff from, say, a valve cover gasket when I am working on a bike. Somehow, the economics of paying a mechanic fifty dollars an hour to spend twenty minutes cleaning up a $7 tube of silicone sealant for the sake of a $5 gasket don't seem very favourable. Then again, I don't work for the Ministry of Finance - they could probably put out a White Paper explaining how this works. All in all, you're better off to fix a leak at a gasket properly: make sure the surfaces are clean, dry, and flat, and use a new gasket. Save the silicone sealant for caulking around the bathtub.