In Her Clutches

As detailed in the last post, I got the clutch and transmission installed. I don't have any photos of the process as I had left my camera out in the rain on a brief camping adventure.
 

How the flywheel housing appeared when I opened it up. Oil mixed with clutch dust makes a goopey paste. I think that the oil was from the oil pump cover but it could have been the rear main.

I spent as much time as I had patience for cleaning up the housing. Here I am using a special tool to install the rear main seal.

The camera eventually dried out and I snapped this picture of the transmission installed plus the mess that was the battery mounting situation.

Rear of tranny and battery holder mounting brackets.

Battery holder.

The rubber bits that held the battery holder to the frame had disentegrated and the nuts were frozen to the bolts. My theory is that a battery at one point leaked acid and wreaked havoc. I got a semi-decent deal on new rubber mounts (shipped from England!).

I removed the old mounts using a Dremel, a drill with a cutting wheel, and expletives.

Some parts of the frame where the paint had been removed were showing rust. I decided to grind the bits out and paint over them. Well ... once you start grinding away, it's hard to stop. You keep seeing more spots. I realized that if I didn't force myself to put the drill down and call it good, I was going to grind the whole frame. Probably not a good idea with the engine still in place.

A good stopping point.

This is sort of related to the cleanup I have been doing. How much is good enough? I'm spending all this time on it, who knows when I'll be up in this area again, why not make it perfect, right? But then I wonder why I am spending all this time scrubbing away at little corners of the bike that aren't even going to be visible when it's assembled. It's difficult to find the correct balance. Some of these guys, when they go through their bikes, it is spotless on reassembly. But I'm going to ride this terrible beast and it probably doesn't pay to sink hours into getting the transmission housing spotless.

On a final note, I happened to notice that the shaft drain washer looked strange. I pulled the plug and found this plastic washer. Not BMW approved, I'm sure.

I swear, this thing was made from the cap of a milk jug ...

Clutch-pack and transmission on

After struggling for a bit with the clutch-pack, I got the transmission mounted last night. I had planned on getting the housing sparkling clean for installation but several bottles of WD-40 and painstaking scrubbing later I was ready to just bolt the damn thing back on. The clutch-facing portion of the transmission ended up fairly clean. The housing is mostly clean of oil but it has a dullness that can only be removed with hours of cleaning with an array of chemicals. Meh. Someone said "Let the patina build, it adds character to the bike." At the moment, I'm inclined to agree. The thing is meant to be ridden. It's only going to get dirty again, anyway.

There is much talk on the Internet about lubing the transmission splines. So I did that, with a toothbrush. I used Honda Moly 60.

I was tightening the top bolts when I noticed that there was a good centimeter of space between the bottom portion of the bell housing and the transmission. Tightening the bottom bolts did not move the transmission closer. My Clymer's instructs one to fully mate the transmission to the engine BEFORE tightening the bolts, to avoid damaging the splines. Whoops. I loosened everything and pushed on the transmission but it would not budge any closer to the engine. I considered grabbing a hammer and a wooden drift but then I remembered reading something about this procedure on the Internet. I used a socket wrench on the rotor to crank the engine over while I pushed on the bottom of the transmission and, boom, instant success.

I installed the clutch-arm and played around a little with the adjustment. I decided to research the adjustment procedure a little more on the Internet because my Clymer's was a bit confusing on the subject. My understanding is that you want 2mm of free-play at the lever and 1mm of clutch-arm free-play at the transmission.

I was getting excited about installing the swingarm but then I remembered I still had a battery-holder issue to deal with. At some point, acid dripped from a battery and corroded the paint of the battery-holder. The rubber battery-holder mounts had mostly disintegrated and their fasteners rusted. It was sort of surprising that the battery had still been secured, actually, as only the two top mounts were still intact.

I had already cleaned and painted the battery-holder but forgotten about the corresponding area on the bike. To remove the old rubber mounts, I've been cutting into them with a Dremel, in order to be able to get purchase on the metal underneath with pliers or a screwdriver. Then I crank on the nut on the other side of the mount to break it free of the rust and corrosion. It's not particularly difficult but it is time-consuming and my Dremel tends to run its battery out quickly (I should probably purchase a corded rotary tool).

Most of the time I have spent while working on this bike is on cleaning, scrubbing and painting, scraping old gaskets, wrestling with frozen bolts.  People talk about how a certain procedure should only take three or four hours but that doesn't take into account the time spent on restorative tasks, which can be considerable, particularly if that part of the bike hasn't been dug into recently (or not since it rolled off the factory floor).

And this makes me feel better about my decision to not take it to a shop. A shop isn't going to spend hours cleaning up your battery holder. Not unless you want to pay them a shop rate for that sort of thing. I'm taking a risk digging into this thing myself, just one stupid mistake away from costing myself a pile of money or ending up with a dismantled carcass that cannot be put back together in my driveway and can only be transported in the bed of a pickup. But I'm learning more about the bike and I'm giving attention to long-neglected components.

I have to figure out how to strike a balance. When the transmission was off and I was waiting for the clutch back from Southland, I noticed a few metal-exposing chips out of the paint on the frame and I thought, semi-seriously, "Well, I could just pull the engine and the forks and a few other bits and get this thing powder-coated". And if I had a full shop to work in and store all the bits and pieces, I might have just continued unbolting things. But I don't want a disassembled motobike. I want a motorbike that I can ride.

So I have to remember to keep perspective. Fix the things that are easy to fix or need to be fixed and leave the rest. I will never give this bike a full restoration. It is meant to be ridden.

Brunhilda

A 1977 R100S. Two 500cc jugs jutting out into the windstream. Dual front disc brakes. A horn that can only offer an anemic squeak. A tendency to weep oil from every joint.

To twist the throttle on her and feel her surge forward, her pistons thudding, the valves lashing away next to your feet ... it's beautiful. No crotch-rocket, she. A ponderous, fastidiously-engineered touring workhorse. At 75 miles per hour, the engine thrums between your legs at a leisurely 4000 revolutions per minute. You get the feeling that she could just eat up the miles, given enough fuel. The only limitation the rider's stamina.

The longest I've ridden at a go was a couple hundred miles. A winter project that has stretched well into Spring.

Sometimes, when I can't fall asleep at night, I picture myself on her, sliding across a vast expanse of desert. Bent down low, knees tucked in, a blue-silver shot of speed on an endless black ribbon of road.