ABC Tech Articles

[montmil]

I've been a member of the Airheads Beemer Club for awhile. http://www.airheads.org/ What really hooked me was the massive Tech Tips Section within the ABClub's website. The information has always been free to whomever wants to stop by and solve a problem or get a concern cured... until now.

The ABC has a newly designed website. More modern in appearance, color photos abound, easy navigation -everything you'd want except for what I consider to be a tactical error.

One of the ABC's Club Canons states:
Airheads like to share time, knowledge, parts, and camaraderie with other Airheads.

This statement sounds to me as if all Airhead owners are welcome, be they Club member or not. However, with the launch of the new website, this sharing of knowledge within the Tech Section is available only to paid ABC members.

Gotta give this a big thumbs down. [smiley=thumbdown.gif]

[Bob_Roller]

I let my membership with ABC expire about 4 years ago, after I had problems with two advertisers on the ABC monthly newsletter, Airmail, Southland Clutch and Motorwerks, both shops are located in the Sandy Eggo area .

Jan B. (owner/operator and resident dictator of the club), in a round about way, pretty much told me to  eff myself if I didn't like my experiences with them !!!!

I got the same response from the editor of BMWMOA at that time, Vince Winkle, when I sent him my emails from BMW airhead tech guru, 'Oak" Okleshen, about the poor quality of workmanship out of both shops that he has corrected in the past, both of these shops were advertisers in the BMWMOA monthly magazine at the time .

'Oak' was, maybe still is, a technical contributor to the BMWMOA monthly magazine at the time .

I let my membership expire with the BMWMOA about 3 years ago .

I will never be a member of any other club, way too  many overblown egos out there .

There are more than enough info outlets available on the internet today that you can get all the help you need to get your bike back on the road again, without having to deal with other peoples crap .

You can always post on Boxerworks, if you haven't gotten enough abuse recently !!!!!

There, I feel better now !!!!!!

[MrRiden]

Just To echo Bob. . .Bah who needs 'em!

[luxlogs]

Out of all the bemmer clubs I like The Airheads the Best. Tech Days at Ed and Joann's in IL are worth the dues alone. I also crash the local Chi MOA do's once in awhile. Super nice people, don't care that I'm only a Airhead.  [smiley=bmw_smiley.gif]

[darrylri]

I can sympathize with the ABC requiring membership to view the contents of their site.  

I have not been shy about mentioning my involvement witth the Vintage BMW club, and I know that we spend nearly everything we get as membership dues and a relatively trifling amount from advertising to print a nice magazine (mostly) and support our website (which I built and maintain for the club for free).  We also limit access to members for certain areas (though the general discussion areas on our forum are open to anyone for free).  

I know that if we could boost our membership by just a couple hundred more people, we could do a lot more with the club.  The choices we have made are with the idea of making it interesting and worthwhile to be a member and yet open enough that we get a lot of people dropping by to look and even participate.  

I have to say that I was once an Airhead member, and I put on a Tech Day every year for the Airheads (and others), but until I understand that I am not paying my money to allow B. Jan to rant and rave about his motorcycle-irrelevant political ideas, I am not joining again.  

[Barry]

I too can sympathize to a point with the ABC requiring membership to view the contents of their site but .... I understand they did it without consulting the original authors of the the articles some of whom have been quite vocal in saying they don't agree with the decision.  

That's if it was a decision. I work with computer systems and I don't believe I've experienced a major system upgrade that didn't make some aspect of the service provided worse than it was before. You have to wonder if it was a conscious deliberate change of policy or whether it was just something that happened to be a feature of the software. Either way it won't help membership and it won't help spread the depth of knowledge that exists for working on airheads.



Thank god that not all airhead information sites are run by committee.

[Bengt_Phorqs]

There are two reasons I belong to the BMW MOA.  1) because of the annual Anonymous Book.  I always carry the current edition with me when Mrs. Phorqs and I travel and it has helped me out on several occasions.  And 2) the tech articles by Paul Glaves and Matt Parkhouse, complete with photographs.  The rest of it is all fluff to me and pretty much useless.

Monte and I had this discussion a couple of weeks ago.  His point was that the price of admission to Airheads was about the same as the MOA.  Good point.  He's a 100% airhead guy (if you don't include his Triumph Sprint) while I'm mixed airheads and oilheads.

My only other comment is that there are damb few forums that have the expertise of this one AND have such truly nice polite members.  This is the one site I check most every day.  So don't hesitate to flash a few bucks to the website every now and again to keep it alive and well.

[suecanada]

I agree wholeheatedly Bengt!! This is where I come to ask for help with LRB and have never, ever been let down! Having met a number of the members, I'd say they are of a very high caliber...great people, to say the least and not a surprise that we have a polite, knowledgeable membership.

I sometimes wander over to Snowbum's site for some insight but one needs some time to get to the kernel over there...I'm lazy I guess.

[Mike V]

... there are damb few forums that have the expertise of this one AND have such truly nice polite members.  

I think this says it all. I have a very high opinion of this forum.  You guys & gals were a big help when I first purchased my neglected R65. I can only hope I've been able to share some help in return along the way.

-Mikey V.

 

[Barry]

You have to wonder if it was a conscious deliberate change of policy or whether it was just something that happened to be a feature of the software.  

I just knew restricting access to the tech articles had to be an upgrade stuff up !

Here's a quote from a recent post on the ABC list

In spite of claims to the contrary, the decision to place the content
under membership only access was indeed made by the outside contractor to match the prior settings.

The post goes on to say they are working on making them public again.