keepemflying
As Ted was leaving, he remarked that his “idle was unstable.”
After making sure his cables had a bit of slack, I grabbed my carb cleaner and gave the rubber connector between the head and the carburetor a quick shot of the volatile cleaner (the bikes will actually run on this stuff, albeit not too well). If the idle goes up or down when dosed with this fluid, that’s a sign of an air leak through the rubber part. I didn’t have any on hand, so I ordered a set for Ted and a set for my parts stash. Yesterday morning, I was visited by Kristin and Mike, with a
1971 R 75/5 on a trailer. The bike has been sitting for a few years and had not even been properly broken in. The odometer only has 13,000 miles showing, and I’ve seen enough of the inside parts, like the points area and inside the headlamp shell, that I’m convinced that is the accurate mileage. The bike had been pur- chased new, or very close to new, by Kristin’s grandfather, and she remembers riding around behind him on it as a small girl. She has taken a motorcycle safety course (she learned to ride on a Ducati 798) and wants to have the bike restored to safe running order for short rides on nice days. She’s the mother of a two-year- old and a two-month-old, so her touring opportunities are prob- ably pretty limited for the present time. Kristin works as a nurse on one of the units I got to know so well during my gall bladder disaster of a few years ago. She went to the same nursing college I did and remembers me, a couple of years ago, giving my annual lecture on caring for the homeless mentally challenged popula- tion to the junior-level students. During the presentation there, I briefly talked about my BMW riding and work. Strange world! Circles within circles…. She and her husband Mike stayed around as I started assessing
what was needed to get the bike running and operating safely. The tires are way too old, and when I pulled the rear one off, we found two patches on the tube—new tires and tubes all around. The oil was dirty. Before the bike is started, I’ll drop the oil pan and clean out the sludge I will undoubtedly find. I dropped in a new Odyssey battery to replace the several year old tractor bat- tery that was stone dead. As a 1971, the bike is completely with- out fuses. I will wire in some protection in the wiring harness. While in the headlamp shell, I found a blown headlamp bulb. As I replaced that, with a bulb that has the hard-to-find Slash Five base and an H-4 halogen lamp, I found there was no low beam. A quick check with a test lamp showed that there was no current in that circuit at all. The handlebar switch and harness are most likely the root of the problem. As I worked on the bike, Kristin and Mike removed the handlebar-mounted fairing. We all agreed the bike looks MUCH better “naked.” That pretty well took up three hours in the morning. We rolled
the bike up the ramp and into my shop for the next few hours of work, and they took off. I’m sure that getting this very cool, 43 year old airhead back in action will be fun for me and fun for you to read about. Off to the National Rally in four days!
The blown standard bulb on the left, it will be replaced by the H-4 halogen lamp on the right. These H-4 bulbs that fit the /5 headlamp fixtures are a bit hard to find. They are sold in Europe and I even ran across a couple in a hole-in-the-wall shop in Antigua, Guatemala. They allow a rider to bump up the lighting with out buying the expensive H-4 lens and reflector. While improving the lumen output over the standard lamp, it is a bit less than the output of the total H-4 set of parts.
A very nice /5! Only 13,000 miles in 43 years, the paint work is original and very shiny and the wiring is basically untouched. The exhaust is completely rusted out on one side and close to blowing out on the other. It’ll get the full “reviving a long asleep airhead” treatment.
54 BMW OWNERS NEWS September 2015
TECH
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