Project Blue: Removing the Timing Cover, Bars, and getting the engine out of the frame.

Just a short update between some work travel. The project is coming along slowly, but without issue. I’ve given up on finding a way to do what I want without a complete teardown. There were portions of the bike I was hoping to leave intact, but that was becoming more of an effort than simply taking it all apart. It is also why the teardown has taken so much longer. Now, I am just going to plow through the rest of the teardown work.

This week, I removed the timing cover, handlebars, headlight, horns, starter, and got the motor out of the frame. All went well and the only issue I ran into was one of the motor mounting studs was a bit corroded into place. It would have been nice for BMW to lubricate these before installing them.

Not an issue now, but I did find that two of my diode board mounts had failed. These were the rubber versions that everybody warns us about. I had not seen any examples of failed mounts before and was alarmed that I had two failures in my motor. These will be replaced with improved mounts when I put it all back together, of course.

You can see in the photo that the threaded stud just separated from the rubber, allowing the board to float. Luckily, the lower mounts were where my grounds were connected.

Here’s the video for Episode 6.