Project Blue Challenges…

I’ll admit it. I severely underestimated what it was going to take to do a “simple update” to this bike. My original plan (once I knew this was more than a good parts bike) was to give the bike a run through and make some limited improvements, have it painted, and get it back on the road for some nice long-distance riding.

The original plan:

• Replace all the rubber and important seals on the bike.
• Update the charging system to accommodate more accessories.
• Add aux lights, a simple facility to power cameras, phone, etc.
• Repaint the bike so it no longer looks like the odds and ends from several other bikes.
• Add the output shaft circlip and tall 5th gear.
• Add a few bits of “jewelry” to help the overall appearance

No firm budget or timeline is a recipe for scope-creep. This project has been a fever dream of scope creep and parts delays. That has been mostly my fault but there have been a few surprises along the way that have not helped.

Scope creep you say? Yes. I think of it as taking on side-quests. Here’s the list.

• Side Quest 1: Auxiliary lights. After spending a long time looking at the modern lights I could add and being disappointed by the lack of period appropriate options out there, I found a fairing from an old RT with the factory aux lights. These are fitted into the fairing in place of the air ducts and flip out in perfect 80’s style using levers in the fairing. Nice! After buying that fairing, I discovered a need for several new parts in the subassembly. These are either stupidly expensive or unobtainium.
  
• Side Quest 2: Gas Springs for Aux lights. The factory lights use a small gas spring on each side to assist in the flip out/in operation. As expected, the 45 year old springs I had weren’t up to scratch. Replacements are available for around $240 each. These were originally made by a West German supplier which is still around, but no longer making these parts or anything close enough to use. Any NOS parts would still be a decades old gas spring and no certainty that they would work, so I had to find an alternative, then do some minor machining to make them work.
  
• Side Quest 3: Lever Actuator Arms. Not sure if that’s the actual name of these parts, but that’s what they do. The lights use a lever and connecting arm to control the lights position. One of these had been completely mangled out of shape. I was able to find some on the used market in not much better condition, so I made my own out of stainless steel rod, some tie-rod ends and a bit of creative work.
  
• Side Quest 4: The Parking Light. On an RT and RS this is above the headlight and uses a small bulb. I had previously installed a compatible LED, but did not like the poor light distribution it provided. This lead me to LED strips that could be fitted into the housing to spread light more evenly. Several 3D printed prototypes and adapters later, I have something that will work and should provide an interesting effect when fully assembled.
• Side Quest 5: Headlight. Along the way, I reached out to Motodemic to see if they still offered compatible LED units for this bike and learned that they were making a new batch. I originally intended to buy one for Project Red, but opted to add one to Blue as well. It is a huge improvement over the standard H4 bulbs and all of the LED replacement bulbs.
• Side Quest 6: Performance. I had the output shaft modified for the circlip by George Thomas at AirSupport. In chatting with him, I mentioned wanting to make sure this was powerful enough for long distance rides. That led to an asymmetric cam, high compression pistons, and having the heads redone including porting.
• Side Quest 7: Carbs. Related to 6 above, I happen to have a pristine set of 40mm carbs and planned to install them instead of the 32mm carbs originally fitted. George was initially optimistic about the heads being able to make good use of these, so I sourced a pile of parts that would be needed for that conversion. In the end, George was not confident it would be worth it, so I reverted to the 32s. Other factors have come into play that led me to need some additional parts for the 32s and I am also still considering a more radical carb option that may yet end up on the bike, so this quest is not complete yet.
• Side Quest 8: Cam Sprocket. Because I was trying to be a little frugal, I purchased a cam without the sprocket included. I planned on simply pressing my existing sprocket onto the new cam. Pressing the sprocket off the old cam resulted in damage to the carrier bracket, so we added a new cam bracket with the improved bushing to replace it. Then, I followed some terrible advice from one of the airheads most celebrated experts on the method to fit the sprocket onto the cam. This resulted in a ton of extra work trying to clean the original sprocket and eventually simply buying a new sprocket. IF YOU ARE DOING THIS JOB, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND WATCHING MY VIDEO ON INSTALLING THIS SPROCKET. It’s easy if you do it correctly, but if you follow that bad advice you may be in the same world of hurt.
• Side Quest 9: Electric Power. There’s a mountain of cheap USB sockets out there. Most look like junk and would require drilling to fit in useful locations. I mulled on this a long while, and ultimately designed my own solution. I’ll do a post and video on that in the future, but let’s say that I am aiming for a high function, highly integrated option that should work very well with the bike’s design.
• Side Quest 10: Electrical System. I am going to use all LEDs and had the whole bike torn down anyway. Since the new EME R3.S electrical hub was now available, I figured why not. So I am now redoing all the wiring. Since I have to add the switches and wiring for the aux lights, this meant adding an Eastern Beaver fuse block to the mix as well. Yay.
• Side Quest 10: Forks. Since the whole thing was already apart, what better time to consider a serious upgrade to the front suspension? I replaced the progressive springs with emulator cartridges from RaceTech. This was a mostly straightforward task, but does include some technical know how to get it right. Video here.
• Side Quest 11: Luggage. The bike originally came with the integrated panniers using the “z-frame” mounts that were also used on the K bikes. It’s a good system, but the bags are a bit smaller in capacity than the classic style and getting a top box that matches is a tall order. So I am converting the whole luggage system to the classic style and adding the top box.
• Side Quest 12: Crash Bars. I like the look of these, even thought they don’t do the best job of living up to their name. The bike came with an unmounted set that I have had on and off the bike several times. I am chalking this up as a failed quest, since I don’t think dealing with them is worth it. More on that later.
• Side Quest 13: Chigee AIO6. I’ll be riding this on trips, not just commuting. I am adding this new gadget for CarPlay and opted for the version with front and rear dash cams. In addition to the wiring requirements (also justifying the Eastern Beaver fuse block), I’ll have to devise a good mounting option. I’ve got an idea of that, but need to get more of the bike together before I can begin solving this one. More on that in the future.

Other general challenges. For a bike with low miles, I have run into a few surprising issues.

The largest has been consistently over-torqued fasteners. I don’t know what gorilla was working at the factory for this, but I have had to do thread repair/clean up on about a dozen places. The most painful of these was on the final drive drain plug, which took most of the threads with it when I removed it. Perhaps this is all the result of galling. Looking at the fasteners, I suspect over-torquing is more likely except in the carbs. Galling was more evident on them and each carb slide needed to be replaced along with the needles, clips and retaining screws. Those retaining screws were each permanently seized in the slides. No amount of penetrating oil, heat, or other tricks worked at getting them out. Thankfully, these are all available parts.

Reassembly of an RT is a real challenge. Brook Reams did a great video showing the process of installing the RT fairing and it covers the steps reasonably well. It falls pretty short of describing just how frustrating this task is. Getting these parts aligned properly can take hours for the uninitiated. It makes it clear why so many RTs end up without their fairings. Clearly, this is something that gets easier if you do it more than once, but it is still a job to test anybody’s patience.

BMW did a pretty crappy job of considering serviceability in some regards. This is why I abandoned the crash bars. With the new charging system, I’ll need to get the bike running and still have access to the charging system. This means having the front cover and lower fairing off and on a few times and working round the oil cooler to make that happen. Crash bars are just one more thing that is in the way of this. I don’t see any way to easily get at the oil filter cover with the crash bars installed, so these are going back onto the shelf instead of on this bike.

So, yeah. I’ve let this project become a bit of a monster. I think it will be awesome when it’s done and my current goal is to ride it to the national rally in next year. At this point, I think it’s safe to say that I am not going to look to redo another RT for the foreseeable future. 😂