The New And Improved Unofficial R65 Forum V2
General Category => General Announcements => Topic started by: ged in oz on February 23, 2019, 04:53:41 AM
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Hi everyone. Another Aussie R65’er. I’ve acquired an 83 model that has spent the last 6 years or so as a Rat Bike.... Yeah, yeah, I know, Different strokes etc, etc but really? I think it probably deserves a better fate. Poor old bugga!
I’ll start a thread in the Restoration section and hopefully I can get some advice and input along the way. I don’t really intend to do a complete restoration as such, but I do hope to get registration plates back on it fairly shortly, get it back on the road and undertake a rolling restoration as and when the right bits turn up.
Despite how it looks!, it is fairly sound mechanicaly so it shouldn’t be all that difficult to get back on the road. Making it look pretty again will be much more of a challenge....
I’m struggling a little adding photos in the post
Photobucket age, so if someone could give me some pointers there I’d be much obliged.
Cheers
Ps: These are photos from the Gumtree ad.
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It has a Don Wilson cast iron disc - something of a rarity these days
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She's beautiful.
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She's beautiful.
Haha. As I say BPT, different strokes...
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It has a Don Wilson cast iron disc - something of a rarity these days
What’s a Don Wilson disc Tony?
You’ll have noticed the QLD single seat mods... I think that particular registration format has led to more bodged old motorcycles than just about anyone could imagine!
I’ll start a resto thread today or tomoz and I can have a whinge about some of its other qld’er problems... :)
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I spy another airhead tucked away in the garage....?
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I spy another airhead tucked away in the garage....?
Ahhh, well spotted Joe, but no.... not mine. Those photos came from the internet listing when I bought the bike.
This is my first Beemer, (after 40 odd years of motorcycling). If I posted photos from my garage it would show various old Ducati’s and BSA’s. :)
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That is a Rat bike that could put other Rat bikes to shame. Didn't know you could dent a tank that deep and still have it in one piece.
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it would show various old Ducati’s and BSA’s.
I was on Notons til the early 70's when I found out BMW's didn't leak oil. If we had cell phones and AAA back then I probably would still be on them ;D
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What’s a Don Wilson disc Tony?
You’ll have noticed the QLD single seat mods... I think that particular registration format has led to more bodged old motorcycles than just about anyone could imagine!
I’ll start a resto thread today or tomoz and I can have a whinge about some of its other qld’er problems... :)
Don Wilson was the all time Australian guru of all things airhead. After a long time working for the biggest Sydney dealer and then after that as "troubleshooter" for BMW (Australia) Don set up his own business servicing, repairing, buying and selling airheads.
The problem with BMW brake discs is that if you want decent brakes you have to run sintered metal pads, if you run sintered metal pads you wear the discs out so fast it will make your head spin. even if you do not prematurely wear your discs out, the blasted things are prone to cracking, at which point they are a throwaway.
Don discovered that one of the local Sydney councils were renewing the manhole covers, storm water and sewer access covers as these 100+ year old cast iron covers were not made accept the weight of modern vehicles . He then discovered that the covers were made out of Meehanite cast iron, one of the very best forms of cast iron around. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meehanite .
Some research led don to realize that the meehanite "variety" of cast iron was perfect for disc brakes and that after 100 odd years of "stress relief" the swapped out covers were just begging to be turned into brake discs.
So, he went to the council and bought the bloody lot and then contracted an engineering firm to turn them all into airhead brake discs.
Compared to the cost of the BMW disc they were an absolute bargain, I think from memory he sold the cast iron discs for around $AU50 plus freight/post. They came with instructions to grind off the base of the rivets holding the BMW discs to the carrier, how to drive out the rivet and came with a bag of high tensile button headed bolts to secure the new disc to the carrier.
Compare to the predatory price Metal Gear charge for their (admittedly very good) product, for some reason they charge more than double for an airhead disc than any other bike and they require you to send your old ones in for exchange.
Anyway, Don's discs handle sintered pads just fine (I have a pair fitted to my R100RS in about 1984 still in perfect working order) and the disc fitted to my 1984 R65 (before I fitted a K100 front end to it) was also a Don Wilson disc.
The only drawback, as you will already be aware of, if that they rust. In fact leave your bike out in the rain unused for a few days and the rust will all but prevent wheel rotation and the first stop is a doozy.
Anyway, that's the story of the "Don Wilson Disc".
Re QLD former single seat rego rules, yes they resulted in the disfigurement of thousands of innocent motorcycles. Worse the details of the plate affixed to the frame remains on the permanent TMR record, although TMR have indicated that as the legislation that underpinned the "modification plate" has now been superseded, they will not enforce it providing the bike is equipped and registered appropriately, i.e. you can have the original seat and fit rear footpegs PROVIDING the bike is no longer registered as a single seater.
The new TMR doctrine is much much better as it essentially amounts to "take the rear pegs off, tell us you have done so and we will register as single seat".
For bikes as old as ours there is an even better alternative - red plates. The Special Interest Vehicle Registration Scheme ("SIVS") was until recently of little, if any, interest to motorcyclists in QLD as the rate was fixed the same whether the "Special Interest" vehicle had 2 or 4 wheels - single seat rego was cheaper.
BUT, that recently changed and you can have SIVS rego for $172 per year and they don't care if you are single or dual seat. The bike must be over 30 years old and you must be a member of a motorcycle club approved by TMR and have a letter from a management member of that club attesting that your membership is current, and where applicable, the age off your bike (not relevant to any BMW made since around 1968).
There are restrictions on when and how far you can ride your red plated bike - you must either be:-
1/. Going to or from an "event" set up by a recognized motorcycle club.
2/. Test riding within 10km of your home
3/. To or from a place were "work" was performed on your bike or obtaining quotes for such work.
Really all that TMR want to do is stop people using Red Plated bikes as "daily drivers", they are quite open to innovation. My club recently put the following proposal to TMR. -
[I've exceeded the character count allowed - continued next post]
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We set up a Facebook 'rides" page, we then passed a motion at a club meeting that any financial member of the club was authorised to post proposed rides to the facebook page and that these would then be deemed "club rides".
I then posed the question to TMR is they would be concerned if only one member went on the ride and their response was that providing the letter of the requirements were met that they were quite indifferent to how many people went on the ride.
So, it distils to this. It's mid-week, work is slow and I am bored, so I decide to go for a ride to Pt Douglas for lunch. I get onto the club;'s Facebook "rides" page and post - "Going for a ride to Pt Douglas today for coffee, leaving at 12:30."
And that's it, the legality of me riding my red-plated bike has been met.
You should see what your local clubs are doing and perhaps SIVS registration is for you.
here endeth the rant.
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it would show various old Ducati’s and BSA’s.
I was on Notons til the early 70's when I found out BMW's didn't leak oil. If we had cell phones and AAA back then I probably would still be on them ;D
Hahaha. Ahh, English bikes! Yep, more than a few trips home on the Beeza have been in a car with the bike on a trailer. I’ve had my ‘54 M21 for about 25 years, so it’s bit like a wart on my bum now. I can’t get rid of it.
BM’s don’t leak you say? That was always my understanding but I’ll post some photos in the resto thread to show how a ‘cultivated’ rat bike BMW can apparently be made to leak!
Davidpdx - yeah, the young bloke I bought it off was actually fairly well mechanically aware and kept it in reasonable order for the 6 years he had it, despite how it looks. But I guess, you’re either into that sort of thing or not. It’s a pretty subjective decision.
When I first saw the photos I actually wondered what the tank was off! I didn’t even recognise it as R65. Replacement tanks seem to be a bit thin on the ground so I’ll likely try and make good on what she has. More on that in the resto thread.
Tony! Awesome story. A genuine bit of Aussie BMW history right there. Thanks for the heads up. That’s exactly why I joined this forum.
Ok, I’ll try and get the resto thread running today so I can keep a bit of track in progress.
Thanks heaps for the input guys.
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As far as photos go, find another free photo hosting service (flickr is one although they've changed their rules recently, google is one, I assume apple runs one, etc, etc) and you can link to images on that service.
This forum doesn't particularly support uploading photos, especially of the size most cameras take today.
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Most ISPs give a certain amount of web storage with people's internet account. Upload them there...
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Ged In Oz - if you're taking the pics on your phone there should be some built in editing program. Along with cropping and some other adjustments, mine has a resize function that I just click a percentage to shrink it by. Usually that's enough to make them fit here but I think they're still clear enough to see detail.
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If your phone is an Android, just set to automatically upload photos to google photos. Google does a very good job at crunching the size of photos at minimal cost of quality, and best of all - it's free.
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Thanks heaps for the photo tips guys. I’m an Apple rather than Android user... I’ve been using a resize app, but it’s obviously not a very good one because 5 times out of 10, it doesn’t reduce the size sufficiently and it doesn’t give you any metrics to monitor it. I’ll keep looking.
Photobucket was all just a little too convenient wasn’t it!
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Keep the file size below 1024K and you'll be OK.
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Thanks Justin. I updated the same app I was using, (it had probably been years) and it now has a option to set the actual file size. Hopefully Im set. Cheers.
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Cool!