Been a while...

It has been a while since my last blog post and although I haven't spent as much time on the old bike as I would have liked, I have been busy some work on it...

So after the excitement of getting the engine running, I think about what the next job should be.

Finally I decide on cleaning the front end up, and I start by looking at the handlebars which have a light layer of rust over them due to being stored for all those years in a garage. I soon realise that this would be easier if I removed the bars, so with no further ado, I start by removing the instrument surround/handlebar pad which was easy as eating cake. Then I look at removing the switch gear, levers etc. It wasn’t long before these were off too, but hey where did those wedge shape things fall from? Oh, well, I will sort that out later! So now just to remove the handlebar clamps and he presto I have the bars in my hand. Staright away I reach for the Autosol chrome cleaner and a part worn scourer sponge to help me get the pitted rust spots cleaned up and before long the bars looked like new. Wow, the quality of the chrome on these old BMW’s is great.

Great I thought, I will look at putting the bars back on, but the top plate is looking rather rusty too, so it wasn’t long before I had stripped the entire front end down leaving just the bottom yoke in place.

Over to the sand blaster to clean up the top plate, handlebar clamps, instrument/headlamp bracket ready for a fresh coat of satin black paint. Whilst the paint on that lot was drying/hardening, as I like to leave freshly painted items several days before re-fitting, I turned my attention to the forks that I had removed. After draining the fork oil, which incidentally I found more oil in one leg that the other! I then cleaned the lower alloy finished legs trying several different chemical cleaners and after some scrubbing and rinsing they looked pretty good.

Then I thought, whilst I am this far, it would make sense to check the head bearings for sufficient grease, which were absolutely fine but I re-greased them with fresh grease anyway. With the bottom yoke off it also made cleaning the headstock area of the frame easier, which then lead me into polishing the entire frame with a black dyed polish so that you don’t see any white area of dried polish anywhere. As I done this I removed all the electrics from the top of the frame and cleaned the terminals and applied some ACF50 to them for good measure.

So now another few weeks have passed of more cleaning and polishing of front end bits, I decide enough is enough and re-assembled the front end, just leaving the front brake system to sort out another day, but with a new front tyre it all looked rather good.

Engine running...

Woo-hoo, got the engine running :-)
That is the first time it has run in years!


It ran a bit rough to start with, mainly due to the amount of oil I put down the bores, so the plugs oiled up and had to be cleaned a couple of times. It also blew some rust out of the exhaust system covering everything in its path.
So now going to change the oil and filter again as I initially run it with flushing oil, then run it some more.

Clean carbs...

The carburettors have now been re-built and mounted back on the bike. That's a major step forward to getting the engine running which I hope to do soon.

 

Here is a picture showing the before and after pictures of the carbs...

 

 

 

 

Dirty carbs, outside and in...

One of the first jobs to do in order to get this bike running is remove the carburettors and strip them down.

Once removed I gave the outsides a bit of a clean before dismantling them. This itself was quite a job but after a few hours they looked much better, although I new it was only part of the job as the most important part, the insides, was yet to be done.

So on with the strip down and I started with the right carb which went well, with all the parts carefully put aside ready for further cleaning.
But then came the left carb, which proved to be a lot worse than the right carb. After removing the float pin and float I was surprised to find that the float valve did not fall out like the right one did and as you would expect. No, instead this was all gummed up, (due to 11 years standing with the old fuel in the carbs) and even after soaking in fresh petrol and blowing down the inlet with a blow gun, it did not want to move. Eventually I won the battle with the help of a pair of pliers and brute force, which then necessitated a new valve but that was alright as I would have replaced it any way.

With the float valve out, the fuel inlet was still blocked and was proving very stubborn to clear properly. So after ordering the carb re-build kit plus a few extra bits, I boxed all my carburettor parts up and took the to Wheelfit Motorcycles near Cambridge, where they put them in their ultrasonic cleaner for a few hours. They came back looking great, but my normal paid work got very busy so the rebuild was delayed until the Christmas holidays.

Motorcycle Live show...

I went to the Motorcycle Live show at the NEC, Birmingham today, and met a fantastic chap, Sam Manicom on the Overland Magazine stand, who was a delight to talk to and gave me inspiration to travel far and wide on my ST when it is all re-built.

Check out his website, http://www.sam-manicom.com/ and see the amazing journey's he has had on his BMW R80GS.

In the garage...

Here it is on the ramp, with the work started.

Bought it...

I have finally bought a motorbike that I have had my eye on for the last few years.

It is a 1982 BMW R80ST which is now just over 30 years old.

The motorbike was owned by a friend of ours and I have had a keen eye on this bike for sometime, often saying to him, 'let me know if you want to sell it and let me have first refusal'. Well when we met in October this year we spoke about the bike again and he said that the time had come and he needed to sell the bike to make room in the garage. The problem was neither of us really knew it's value, and we could not find another one for sale anywhere, so it took a lot of investigation on the web for us both to agree on a price which we eventually did and on the 1st of November I collected the bike in a van and took it to my garage ready to start working on it.

You will be able to follow the progress of this project here on this blog.

Here it is before going in the garage...