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The accidental project


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Let me start by saying that I never meant to have a project bike. But it started to feel like it was going that way, so now I figured "hey, what the hell - embrace it". I've seen people say that their project threads help keep them motivated, so seems worth a shot.


I've finally fixed all of the problems that came with the bike (touch wood), so the first chunk of this thread will be retrospective. This ended up overlapping with stage two of my plan, upgrading the bits that are already there. Stage three is doing some cosmetic mods that I've been thinking about.


Some back story:


After completing my DAS I wanted an adventure bike, or better yet one of the big thumpers like a DR650SE or an XT600. But of course, these things hold their value fairly well. Too popular for their own good at the moment. Thanks to some financial complications at the time when I passed my DAS my big bike fund took a bit of a hit and it looked like I was going have to change my plans and get something more in my budget like an early ZZR with a terrible paint scheme.


But then I was offered a peach of a price on a BMW F650GS. Apparently it was generally in pretty good nick but needed a bit of a clean up. Gave it a test ride and a general look over (but I'll be honest, at the time I didn't really know what the hell I should be looking at :lol:) and the only problem I could see was a dodgy speedo, always reading about 10mph high. I was told that there was a sensor at the front wheel that probably just needed a clean, or at worst would be cheap and easy to replace. So I figured "what the hell", and went for it. I'm too trusting for my own damn good sometimes :roll:


So anyway, got it back to Cambridge and took it to someone who would actually know what they were looking at so that they could give me a better idea of what work it needed. And oh, was the list long. For one thing the previous owner had kindly let me ride the full length of A15 and a good chunk of the A14 with a crack in the front wheel spacer so big that the wheel was one bump away from giving way. Various other problems, too. At this point I didn't know the first darn thing about fixing a bike, just the most basic maintenance stuff, so I let the garage do the urgent stuff for me. Just the bits that would either endanger my life or significantly shorten the life of the bike. Or the bits that would make it fail the MOT that was due in two months.


So, first entry; the stuff that doesn't count because I paid someone else to do it.

  • Changed out the cracked front wheel spacer and knackered wheel bearing

    New clutch cable

    New rocker cover

    New cam chain tensioner, because the old one had completely caved in

    New cam chain

    New inlet manifold, old one was starting to split where a hole had been drilled in it to bodge the Scottoiler into place

They couldn't work out what was causing the speedo problem, and I didn't have the cash for them to replace the rear disc and shock which were both on their last legs so I just had to make do for the time being.


For the purpose of reference (because I intend for it to look very different once I'm done), here is how it looked on the day I got it home:

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Oops... had the bike for just 6 weeks (and the first 3 were spent waiting for that new cam chain tensioner) before I managed to drop it while pulling a U turn on an icy road at all of ~3mph. This was my indicator for a week or two...

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An old empty box of ID cards and one hell of a lot of duck tape :lol:

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Four months in, still hadn't got that damn speedo working - been relying on a GPS speedo the whole time. Tried cleaning the sensor as advised by the previous owner and that did exactly jack shit. Oh, and the sensor isn't on the front wheel like he said. Really reassuring that he didn't even know where it was :lol:

Here it is, sat on the rear wheel and looking a little bit tired.

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Got a multimeter on the sensor and established that it was the sensor that was shot, and not the clocks. Not sure why the garage didn't bother doing that. Anyway, phew. Sensors cost £20, clocks cost £200. On the down side, the sensor cable is routed very inconveniently and is nigh on impossible to remove without taking off the fuel tank and rear subframe :shock: I've since discovered that this kind of thing is fairly typical of BMW.


At this point my finances were still reeling from those initial repairs, so I couldn't afford a torque wrench. And I certainly wasn't going to remove the subframe if I couldn't torque it back up properly afterwards. Ordered a speedo sensor and shoved it in a drawer for now.

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Next up, coolant needed a change. I knew the bike had been standing for a fair while, and as far as I can tell from the patchy service history it had been a good few years since it had any fresh stuff. Plus the blue stuff in there was nigh on impossible to see through the almost-opaque sight glass, so I found some bright red stuff that should be suitable for my bike. Flushed the whole system out, thankfully no sign of any bits of metal in the old coolant so at least the inside of the cooling system is probably in good nick :lol:


While I had the plastics off, I took the headlight unit off too. My hands are a little bit too big to reach in behind the clocks and reach the adjuster. Checked the condition of all the wiring in the back of the clocks just to be safe. Maybe getting a little bit paranoid about the bike at this point :oops: All looks good, though. Also gave me a chance to see how the headlight and indicator brackets are held on, which will be handy for some of the future modifications I'm thinking about.

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Got carried away and proceeded to strip most of the exterior from the bike so that I could get a better feel for what goes where, how it all works together, and what else might break soon. No immediate worries right now, but the ECU was filthy :lol:

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Also, that particularly dirty part with all the frayed bits is the speedo sensor cable. This... wasn't really a surprise.

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Six months in now, birthday happened and my parents bought me a Givi rack! Thought it'd be years before I'd be able to afford to get some luggage sorted, what with the repair costs. Sadly the F650 has a bit of a rep for melting soft panniers.


Looked into some guides to building my own hard panniers but concluded I had neither the tools nor the skills at this stage to have panniers ready in time for the 2014 rally (only a week to go). Instead I got a pair of "universal" panniers and a "universal" pannier mounting kit. Universal is apparently also a word for "kind of fits everything but doesn't fit anything without a struggle".


Some drilling, filing, sealing and swearing later, I'm all set to carry half a ton of camping gear.

 

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Eight months down.


Remember how I said that my rear shock was on the way out? Yeah, riding to the rally and back with all my camping crap and then doing a 1500 mile trip around the country with even more weight was probably the last straw. Day two of the big ride, it started creaking every time I sat on the bike :lol: And my GOD could I feel every single bump in the Peak District and Lake District. Every time I got off the bike I was giving the swingarm pivots a blast with some lithium grease to try and shut up the creaking - like hell I was going to cancel the trip :lol:


By the time I got back the shock wasn't really doing anything any more. Spent a large portion of the final day riding it standing up to keep as much weight as possible over the forks instead of the now-dead shock. Bike was then garaged for a month while I waited until I had money for a new one. The Hagon shock was cheaper but I'd heard bad things about it and it didn't have the remote preload adjuster. Good thing I did a lot of overtime in August...

 

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BMW design strikes again!


You have to remove the rear subframe (or at least raise it a fair bit) in order to remove the shock.

You have to remove the silencers to remove the subframe.

You can't remove the silencers if you can't remove the clamp.

You can't remove the clamp if it turns out that underneath all that rust the previous owner has welded the clamp shut, and spot welded the silencers on.

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At the recommendation of the F650 forum, I tried the following items:

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The chisel proved to be weaker than the clamp, and although the saw was getting through it gradually I just couldn't get the leverage while reaching in under the tail of the bike.


Tango and Bonniebird to the rescue! I'm told that Bob will take any excuse to use the angle grinder...

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With the cans finally off, the tail went up...

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And old shock came out and the new one went in. That was the easy bit :lol: ...actually, I lie. Getting the old preload adjuster out and the new one in was an absolute bast*rd.

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Took advantage of the subframe being off the bike and fitted that new speedo sensor, too. Bit of a bugger to route through the bike even with the thing split open, hand to use a bit of a coathanger to pull it through one tricky spot.


Stuck it all back together, no more creaking now. Took the time to set the sag properly and now it behaves like a completely different bike. I even know how fast I'm going, too. Lovely stuff!

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Nice write up Ollie - seems like a loads of stuff went wrong when you see it all in one place! At least you'll know it's properly sorted when it's done. :-)

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Still a fair way to go yet before I've caught up with where the bike is now :lol:

When I catch up to the present day I have a pretty little picture I made in Photoshop of how I want to make the bike look once I'm done with the cosmetic stuff :lol:

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Does it perchance look like an entirely different model? ;-)


The offer is still there if you need a lend of some tools or if anything needs welding up once Bob has had a go with his grinder. :-)

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Nice write up. Seems you have well and truly got to know your bike inside and out! It is actually one of the models I have have my eye on for when I pass my full test. Looking forward to seeing the plans you have for it :-)

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  • 5 months later...

If you'd seen my other recent posts in other threads, the money ran out so I'm sticking it back together and flogging it :lol:

I had some awesome ideas for it, but sadly BMW ownership does not match up with my wages. Especially when it's a crapped out BMW. And I'm paying Cambridge rent prices. Ah well.

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If you'd seen my other recent posts in other threads, the money ran out so I'm sticking it back together and flogging it :lol:

I had some awesome ideas for it, but sadly BMW ownership does not match up with my wages. Especially when it's a crapped out BMW. And I'm paying Cambridge rent prices. Ah well.

 


Sad times i have nearly finished my project but its due to go up for sale to pay for my test, will have a 12months mot if your interested ;) kawk er5 1 owner 49k had a long list of things already done for the mot, i didn't want to sell but i want to srt my test this yesr then maybe another project will pop up in the mean time.


So whats your next bike or project Once the bm has gone

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Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass - not my sort of bike.


I've still got the CG to ride about on, but there are also a few bikes coming out this year that have piqued my interest. Who knows, I might finally take the plunge and get something on finance...


Don't think I'll be taking on another project too soon, I just want to actually do some riding for once :lol:

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