Painted engine emblem

[Jakob]

Does anyone know why some eblems on engines are painted in black and others aren't?

Is it just because the paint fel off?

[Justin B.]

I would suspect someone removed the paint as part of a "personalization" scheme. 

[Barry]

The paint won't have fallen off on it's own.  To get every spec of paint off some sort of blasting media must have been used.

[Tony Smith]

The paint won't have fallen off on it's own.  To get every spec of paint off some sort of blasting media must have been used.

Rat piss did a good job of removing the paint from the emblems on my R65 and also from the starter cover. Amazing stuff it is in terms of what it will dissolve when allowed nearly 20 years to do its work.

[BPT]

* diligently adds Rat Piss to the list of officially recommended BMW maintenance materials.

[Tony Smith]

* diligently adds Rat Piss to the list of officially recommended BMW maintenance materials.

Shudder....Having to remove 20 years accumulation of rat byproducts, rat food storage and dead rat skeletons was a task I prefer to forget. In fact I very nearly simply took the whole lot to the municipal dump rather than face it.

Glad I didn't.

Below  is a photo taken after I'd temporarily bolted a front end to it so I could take it outside and hit it with a high pressure hose, the following photo is shortly after I registered it. My R65 is never going to be a "pretty as a picture" restoration, but I am confident that the mechanical restoration was good as I've now done 10,000 miles and it has never let me down or (worse) come home on a trailer.

But, as you can see, the rat piss was pretty effective on the paint and finish

[davidpdx]

Impressive restoration. that is some nasty looking rust. Love the black, kind of hot in the summer but it sure is pretty.

[BPT]

Although I feel bad for the poor, homeless rats, your gentrification project with their former home turned out very nicely done.  Nice looking bike there.

[Tony Smith]

.  Nice looking bike there.

The camera flatters, it doesn't really look all that good. I should have listened to my wife, she wanted me to completely strip it and send frame and swing arm out for sand blasting.

I wish I had because when I started in 2013 I thought it was going to be a quick and easy mechanical  reassembly. In fact I ended up doing pretty much a full resto on the engine and gearbox. At the end of it I have a bike that I am confident is 100% mechanically, but looks a bit of a mess.

I'm about to tackle my R100RS in earnest and have invested in a sand blasting cabinet so that I can clean up corrosion affected metal, I've also bought a couple of laboratory power supplies and a number of plastic drums and tanks - I'm setting up to zinc or nickel plate small parts and bolts so that I can recreate the original "factory fresh" looks.

When I finish the R100 I may revisit the R65 but I suspect the next project will be a K100.