Hi all,
I'm Luca. My first bike was a little Yamaha xs400 Maxim, then I went through two Kawasaki Vulcan 750's (first one slipped a balancer gear and ground a hole through the case). I, however, have grown tired of cruisers, and trying to pull carburetors out of a v-twin
So when my brother's coworker offered me a 1982 R65LS in Polaris for $600 to give it a good home, I grabbed it in a heartbeat. Motorcycles haven't been the same since
When I got the bike, it had about 5400 miles on it, the factory Contis, some service history, previous regisrations, owners manual, warranty card... all that jazz. One tiny dent in the tank, but no paint fade. Missing the battery covers though.
Pushed it into a friends garage (which wasnt easy, a caliper was frozen) and got to work. Completely rebuilt the front brakes, splitting both calipers, which involved welding a big nut onto one of the rounded off recessed caliper bolts, replaced all but the top banjo line, rehoned the M/C, rebuilt the forks, repacked the steering head bearings with fresh grease, replaced the tires and tubes, changed all the fluids and filters, rebuilt the carburetors (except for the butterfly shaft o-rings), replaced the plugs and wires, put some fresh thermal compound on the ignitor, and cleaned out the petcock (new rubber on its way, as what I put back in was pretty ugly). Also fubar-ed the gas cap (that is how I found Snowbum), but hey, all in all not bad. Pulse-air system will be gone soon too.
Working on this BMW has been a pleasure, and (for the most part) the engineering is remarkable. Now I pretty much have a 30 year old, brand new bike. And I don't get jealous anymore when I see somebody riding an airhead... or anything else for that matter! Hope to have a few pics soon, and look forward to being a part of your forum. This is a nice little corner of the internet [smiley=bmw_smiley.gif]
-Luca
