Project Blue: Revisiting Colors and Parts Luck…

Sometimes, events conspire to guide us in ways we did not expect. This happened this month in a few ways. I had been pondering what to do about auxiliary lighting on this project.

I want Blue to be a capable road tourer and definitely want to add to the visibility. I’ve looked pretty far and wide for options and none have really jumped out as a good overall fit for this project. The most common approach seems to be adding lights to engine protection bars, which is fine. I am not in love with any of the contemporary lighting options, mainly because they all have a bias towards the modern adventure rider crowd and seem to want a bit more custom work for their switchgear. Especially the Denali options. These are great lights, but not the look I am hoping for.

BMW did have an option for airhead RTs that swaps out the air ducts for pop-out lights using a clever lever mechanism. It’s interesting that every RT I’ve seen seems to be ready for this option, but very few examples are found in the wild. I haven’t event been able to identify the parts list for them. I even spent a few hours tearing into the Fairing from Red to see if I could design and fabricate something similar.

As luck would have it, I am a regular listener to the Airheads247 podcast and an episode in early January included a discussion with Robert Sabel (Roughchild) who mentioned having a fairing with these lights as a take-off from one of his projects. Robert is in the LA area and I happened to have a day-long layover planned for late January, so I reached out. Robert is a class act and was happy to meet with me. I had a great time chatting with him and wound up snapping up his spare fairing along with some other things. Well, a lot of other things as it turns out and I will elaborate on that in another post.

The fairing is in a bit of a rough condition, but the lights are in good shape with smooth action to open and close. They add a good deal of weight to the fairing, which is unfortunate, but I think it’s worth the effort to see if I can incorporate them into this project. I will be harvesting the lights and levers from this fairing and incorporating them into my current fairing. It’s all necessary, since I am repainting the whole thing anyway. It should result in a more rare, but authentic configuration in the end.

Also, while chatting with Robert, we discussed paint and he showed me this tank.

It’s a color scheme from the RS models that is quite stunning. You can see a good example in one of Brook Reams’s projects. Possibly one of the most attractive paint schemes on any BMW.

I really like the blend of dark blue and silver in this, but am thinking about reviving a similar scheme from later production years.

This scheme is more fitting for a 1991 bike and I like the incorporation of more silver in the fairing. For my project, the current plan is to blend these two into something new.

I think this will end up being a beautiful bike in the end. Now, I need to see if I can find a painter who’s up to the task, or if I want to gamble on doing it myself. (side project alert)