Keep it up.

Fenders and front wheel.
I am pleased to see that the 17mm axle is working out just fine.
I am beginning to see the black on black come together.
It is bugging me that my photography sucks; there is a Norton Atlas that is cluttering up the picture in the background along with a bunch of other junk.

I mean it this time.

On go the triple tree, front forks, headlight shell with the wiring harness, coils, relays, ... pretty good days work, starting to build momentum here.

On with it

Organize, on the stand and attach the sub-frame. Now that there is a sub-frame we can attach the rear fork, drive shaft and shocks.

Focus .... what is this blog for?

This is actually Tuesday April 7th but I am back dating the next few posts to catch up on things.
I started this blog with honorable intentions. Buy a abused old BMW motorcycle and neatly journalize the restoration of that project. Very neat, concise and focused. Not happened yet and it ain't going to happen!! My life does not, has not and will not work in a neat, concise and focused manner. If you have followed this blog at all it has meandered seven different BMW motorcycles and I am about to blog about the eighth. Also, two Hondas have come and gone lately. Paul went to school and is back again. Luke has started school. I have lost my job and I am unemployed and searching. This is not about a motorcycle project, this is about life!!

This is a copy of a post I made on the BMWMOA forum

Well, I'm unemployed and the next job is not coming soon. I have been looking for ways to make extra cash and have been trying to flip motorcycles to see a small profit but that ain't working out that great. I'd rather only deal with airheads but
(A) most are going up for sale at twice what they are worth or
(B) if they are priced right they are
(B.1) absolute junk or
(B.2) sold within hours or less. I'm trying to work with '70's Hondas too but that is really risky.
Anyways, what this leads into is yesterday I called on a CL ad for a 1976 R75/6 and I called within the 1st hour. I left a message. I emailed. I left another message. I emailed again. I left a message. I went to bed and gave up. I woke up and there was an email apologizing and the owner would be calling me sometime this morning. Is this a blog or a thread? Sorry, ADD and on a scale of manic to depressive I'm manic right now. So, long story short, I drove an hour to pick up my 'new' BMW. Problem: I do not want to sell this one, something else has got to go. For a guy that grew up in the '70's this is a hot rod BMW. Somebody really took care of this one. It came from California, spent some time in Neenah WI and then the last five years in a very nice basement waiting to be cafed. This is one of the cleanest 33 year old motorcycles that I have seen. The Lester mags are cleaner and nicer than those on my 1980. Dual-plugged heads, electronic ignition, Koni shocks, San Jose anti-bottoming kit, nothing is missing, nothing is oxidized, comes with a big Clymers manual AND a BMW /6 service manual, all of the tools are there, crash bar, the Luftmeister is off but the lights have not been reinstalled. The bar-backs, American bars, Luftmeister and luggage rack will go on eBay but everything else is woot!! OK I'm happy.

2009-03-14 003

Take a stand ...

I have had this thing dangling from a hoist for so long which is not even professional looking or very easy to work on. I had just made a base for putting BMW's on the lift without having them sitting on the oil pan and then thought that the same base would be great for setting this one on too. So, I made another base and then made a stand for working on this. Looks really good and is very sturdy but, if you think about it, it's kind of a Mike Mulligan. If I assemble the whole motorcycle on this stand how do you get it off of the stand? That is where the hoist comes back into play. Still, better than being on the hoist full time.

front end, axles and wheels

Actually the aforementioned idea is working out pretty good. A series of events lately has proved that out.
On his birthday Luke said something about finding a complete front end so that we didn't have to mess with rebuilding one out of the two that I have for this bike. Just out of curiousity I went on eBay, found and won a complete front end; triple tree, bar clamps, forks and shocks, at a pretty nice price. I was pretty excited about that because that would cerainly make things easier and maybe things would start moving along. Yeah, right.
I received the forks. They were from a 1976 R90/6. I learned something new. In 1974 BMW's first disk brake was released on the new /6 series and as part of that design they went from the standard 17mm axle to 14mm. That didn't prove out to be a good idea so they quickly changed back to 17mm late in 1974. So, the 1974 front wheel that we have has a 14mm axle and I want to use a 17mm front end. See how simple this is?
I asked around and reviewed my options and what I am going to do is to modify the 1974 wheel hub so that I can uses post-1974 parts on it. This should be possible. I already have bought a 17mm axle and I needed to replace the bearings and seals anyway so the extra cost left is for the different 17mm axle spacing and shims. This should end well and it is giving me some momentum to get a little done.
Part of the momentum is that now I have three front ends and I want to just keep what I need and clear out the rest. I had today 9 auctions complete on eBay. Really disappointing. I had about $96 dollars in sales, 3 items didn't get any bids and the rest went for really low prices. Oh, well, cash is better than clutter.