It begins

It all begins with an idea.

As I have enjoyed riding my Scrambler (Project Gold) for the past year, I have had an increasing itch to get back to my younger days. The RnineT is meant to evoke the best of a pure motorcycle riding experience while still being a relatively modern machine. As such, it has a good bit of modern technology, making it more of a reminder than a genuine experience. For what it is, the RnineT is a fantastic bike, but it will not provide an old soul with the full experience of owning a classic motorcycle.

My first cars were primarily old Fords. A ‘62 Falcon and a ‘66 Bronco. They were both old and busted when they came to me, so if I wanted them to be reliable, I had to learn how to fix them. At the time, parts and technical manuals were easy to come by and relatively affordable. Both cars were pretty straight forward for the most part and required only minimal tools for much of the work I needed to do. Carb rebuilds, valve jobs, and most of the top end could be done with a few wrenches, sockets, and screwdrivers. They were fun to own and work on. And doing so, meant I knew how well the work had been done. It provided a sense of pride and pleasure that is mostly gone form modern vehicle ownership. This remains true for the RnineT.

Since I am not a certified BMW technician and do not have access to all of the tooling and technical manuals (I’ll leave out the long diatribe on that for now) and because I do not have the space to dedicate to any car projects, I have decided to acquire a type 247 BMW airhead to fill this void. My intent is to completely rebuild the bike and do as much of the work myself as possible. Along the way, there will be some work that will be done by others, such as paint, final drive, and heads, but where possible, I will endeavor to do it all myself.

The bike…

I’ve spent a few months keeping an eye on eBay, various enthusiast sites, and other places to find a good candidate for the project. I wanted something that was in good order overall, but was not worried about needed work that would be done during a rebuild. Mileage was not really a concern, but regular maintenance was. These bikes have a few opportunities for a negligent owner to create some havoc.

In the end, I picked a 1985 R80 RT found on Craigslist. It was listed as having 163,000 miles and the price was a little below my expectations. I believe this is the first year of the mono lever design for non-GS bikes and there are plenty of parts sources still available. I am the third owner and both of the priors kept reasonably good records for the mileage, or that’s what it seemed when I bought it. This bike was always owned to cover miles. The original owner was rode between Milwaukee and Minneapolis regularly whenever the weather allowed. The second owner was more of a weekender in Wisconsin, but put on a good number of miles as well. I eventually found a note in paperwork indicating oil changes in the 240K and 250K range, so it’s possible that this is a quarter million mile bike. Those entries could be errors though as the miles between those entries and others seem to be higher than the owner would have accumulated.

I picked up the bike and rode the two hours back to Illinois on back roads, finding nothing alarming along the way. It’s a good rider and ready to begin its transformation.