Author: calepwhoward

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Givi, not Luftmeister, Top Case

Something unexpected happened today. I got an email from the seller of the Luftmeister top case. He told me the hasp on the case was broken and asked if I still wanted it. I asked for a refund and he gave me a refund. I knew he didn't have a key for the lock but I don't think he knew the hasp was broken. Honestly prevailed and he told me about it BEFORE he shipped it. That's just awesome and very much appreciated.

But I Still Need a Top Case

Need might be a little strong but having a top case makes it easier to get where I'm going with my stuff. When I got the R1150R it didn't have a top case so I ordered up a Givi top case. I also got a universal mounting bracket to install on Otus but decided I liked the vintage look of the Luftmeister top case. The Givi case went with the R1150R when I traded for the GS. My Luftmeister case didn't survive my accident. I've wanted to replace it for some time, and hoped this was going to work out, but it was not to be. Because I still have the universal mounting plate I decided to give up on the quest for a replacement Luftmeister top case and I ordered up a new Givi top case. The last one I had was an enormous 57 liter case. This time I decided to go with a slightly smaller 47 liter case. This should keep my stuff from being scattered when I head to the upcoming rally.

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Luftmeister Top Case

I finally committed to a replacement Luftmeister case for Otus. My Luftmeister case was a casualty of my accident and was replaced with a Givi top case. While the Givi case was really nice, it was also the top case for my R1150R. When the R1150R was traded for the GS, the Givi top case went along with the R1150R. Since that time Otus has been without a top case. He looks good without it, but with rally season upon us a top case would be a nice-to-have. My friends at eBay facilitated the transaction and a new-to-me Luftmeister top case will be here in about a week.

It's Old

Part of the joy and challenge of a 1977 motorcycle is being period-correct yet functional. I never had a problem with the Luftmeister top case (until it exploded on impact). It looked correct on Otus and was just roomy enough to hold some light weight gear for making camping more comfortable. I have a bag of things I consider essential for life on the road and they fit well in a Luftmeister top case. I'm happy to have a replacement Luftmeister top case on the way. This is the final piece to restore Otus to rally configuration.

I'll add pictures during and after the installation.

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Airhead Revival

Airhead Revival

Slowly but surely I'm making progress on the Project Bike - the 1982 R100 RT. I decided to start from the back of the bike and work my way forward. I started by removing and disposing of the Luftmeister top case. The previous owner had a motorcycle riding friend get rear-ended once upon a time. As he didn't want to get rear ended either he decided to install lights in the top case. The cuts were too large to patch so the top case went into the bin. I am hoping to find a more usable Luftmeister top case of the appropriate vintage to install on this bike (or, possibly, install on Otus?).

With the top case out of the way, and because the back-to-front work requires I make some room, I decided the next course of action was removing the tractor battery. The problem with the tractor battery was that I couldn't get it out without removing the air box. With the air box out of the way the battery finally came out (thanks Garrett!). I also drained and removed the fuel tank so I could get a better look at what lies ahead.

The next step is going to be to drain the final drive and drive shaft so I can replace the shaft boot and check the final drive for wear. I'll also give the bike a good spline lube while I'm in there. We'll see where this all takes me.

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The RT - Featured

BMW R100 RT – Reise-Tourer

Not As Vintage as Otus Airhead

I love my Airhead. People who know me know this. I try not to talk too much about Otus but sometimes I can't help myself. I've also come to understand that a 42 year old motorcycle, like a veteran ball player, needs some time off during the season. With these thoughts rolling around in my head I stumbled upon a 1982 R100 RT - Reise-Tourer - hiding in a garage in Manhattan, KS. The seller had retired from riding in 2016 but made it official when I bought this machine.

The motorcycle has been sitting since at least 2016 as that's the most recent renewal sticker on the license plate. It appears this was a soft retirement as the fuel tank is nearly full of vintage gasoline and the top case and panniers are also full of the bits and pieces a rider collects over years of riding. The bike is rough around the edges and needs a bit of love, but the bones are good.

There are, at least right now, two possible outcomes for this machine:

  1. clean it up, catch it up on all service and fluids, makes sure it runs right, and I re-sell it.
  2. do everything in #1 but I replace the BMW RT fairing with my Don Vesco Rabid Transit fairing and keep the bike as Otus' understudy

There's also the crazy notion of making this a sidecar rig. Regardless of the final outcome I'm focused on #1 right now.

P.S. - the helmet came home with me too!

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The Flag @ The Ace Cafe Orlando

At The Ace Cafe Orlando

After visiting The Ace Cafe London just a few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to find myself in Orlando and got to visit The Ace Cafe Orlando. While both cafes are cool each in their own right, The Ace Cafe London is steeped in tradition where The Ace Cafe Orlando is finding its own way. This is probably explained by the difference between a pub in London and a bar in the US. More about this later but for know each cafe has its own unique vibe.

Since discovering The Ace Cafe when traveling on business last year I have made it a point to get back there each time I'm in Orlando. Thursday night is Bike Night at The Ace and every Thursday night I've been there has been a pile of fun. This most recent Bike Night was additionally awesome for two reasons - one of the Slow Drags was flagged using my home club's flag, and I got to see my friend Casey again.

Kent is the "MC" of Bike Night. His job is to get the crowd involved and he does a good job. I got to know Kent while I was sitting at the bar before the festivities started. We talked about the Slow Drag competition - slowest rider to complete the course without putting their feet down wins! - and using my home club's flag to send off a pair of competitors. He's a wild man! Casey is my favorite server in the place. She got stuck with me the first time I went to The Ace and she's taken care of me on every return trip. She's good stuff!

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Air & Oil - Featured

Shake Down Ride – the GS

The GS was ready to come off the lift so we went for a shake down ride! An Airhead friend near Vinland, KS spent minutes planning our impromptu ride. The weather was glorious (60 degrees in January - this kind of weather confuses me when it comes to global warming...) and the roads were dry! I met him at his place and we took the back roads to The Blind Tiger in Topeka. Beers on their deck was a great January treat! We stayed too long and it got a little chilly after the sun set. I suppose I could have tried out the heated grips but my hands stayed warm behind the GS hand guards.

The GS ran well and is very stable. I've replaced a lot of broken parts since trading for it so I was a little worried that my euphoria during the test ride hid big problems. Fortunately there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the bike! It tracks straight and true, goes and stops well, and handles very predictably. It's a heavier bike that Otus and the traffic circles made that obvious, but it never surprised me. At 70 mph it revs at 4,000 rpm in 5th gear - almost identical to Otus - so it feels very familiar and comfortable. The riding position is what I was hoping for - my feet beneath me and my back straight. While it is a bit more work to ride this big bike, I am very pleased with the GS!

Spotwalla Route Map

What's Next?

Now that the shake down ride is in the books I'll be doing a bit more maintenance-related jobs - fluids, filters, and lots of grease - so I'll be ready to go anywhere on this big machine!

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Jesse Top Case - Featured

Installing a Jesse Top Case

Getting Started

Installing a Jesse Top Case isn't difficult, but the complete lack of instructions means you have to think about how you're going to make it happen. There were a couple of challenges for me with this installation. The first issue is the baggage porter (the official term for the luggage rack according to the BMW microfiche) on the GS. It appears the baggage porter is a stock BMW part but it had several cracks. A quick trip to Bob's BMW revealed a price tag I didn't like ($326.28) so I found a local welder to make repairs. Dave's Welding & Restoration repaired the cracks for a fraction of the cost of the new part. YaY! Dave!

Top Case Mounting Plate

Vintage Bits

The second issue is the plate that was the top case mounting bits already installed on the GS. As far as I can tell these are "vintage" Jesse Luggage bits but neither the compartment nor the plate had any markings to help me be sure. Anyway, I like the lockable compartment - and it was keyed to the side cases - but the plate itself has been cut to fit in spite of the handle bolted to the baggage porter. I sat the top case on the plate and saw that the turned up edges would prevent the top case from mounting flush to the lockable compartment, so the plate would have to go, but it definitely had a role to play in completing the installation.

Measure Lots, Drill Once

I drilled holes in my brand new $340 top case. I hate drilling holes in stuff - especially new, expensive stuff. I knew that I needed to install the top case directly on the locking compartment so I had to figure out how to transfer the mounting hole dimensions to the bottom of the top case. Then it hit me - I could use the legacy mounting plate as a template. I grabbed a roll of one of my favorite substances - double-faced foam tape - to help me in this quest. I put a couple of small pieces of tape on the locking compartment to hold the plate in place - curved edges pointed down. I then used several pieces of tape to keep it stuck to the top case when I had it in the position I wanted. Being able to easily remove the plate from the locking compartment was what was going to make or break this approach. The plate remained stuck to the bottom of the top case without a big fight removing it from the locking compartment. A red sharpie and a sharp twist drill is all I needed to drill the holes. A quick eyeball check showed that my plan had worked!

When I originally separated the plate from the locking compartment there was a foam tape sandwiched between. I wandered the aisles of my local hardware store and settled on the Loctite mounting tape for my top case installation. I wasn't sure about the foam tape I found and thought the Loctite product would be more durable. Only time will tell.

Wrapping Up

After getting everything installed and the workbench cleaned up I cracked a beer and reflected on the installation. I was pretty happy with how things turned out but when I looked at the mounting job I decided that I needed to do a couple of final things to be really satisfied with the project. I decided that I needed to add fender washers and blue Loctite to the bolts. The only challenge was the placement of the bolts at the front of the top case base. I wouldn't be able to use a full-size fender washer so, rather than using a smaller washer I decided to square off one side of the front fender washers using my Dremel tool. While I'm not sure any of this actually matters in a practical sense this did make me feel better about the installation so there's that...

This is not a hard project but I was hesitant to get started because I had a blank of a top case and no instructions from the manufacturer. Once I got over having to improvise the installation it was fine but I had to jump over that issue to get this done. My issues getting this done have to do with the motorcycle being 20+ years old and the existing hardware being a mix of BMW and what appears to be vintage Jesse bits. The saving grace was the plate installed on the locking compartment. That ended up being the template I needed so I could drill holes. I really like the way the kit looks and am happy with where I ended up!

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Strix 2.0 - Featured

Strix 2.0?

I’m happy and sad to announce that I am planning on trading Strix for a 1995 R1100 Gelände Sport – a GS! Strix is a wonderful motorcycle but I cannot get  comfortable riding him long distances. I’ve lowered the pegs and added a seat cushion but he still just isn’t right for me. I ran into a gentleman hoping to sell his GS so he could find a single-spark R1150R. I have been saving my pennies for a GS and wondering what to do about Strix. This chance meeting and discussion looks like it is going to solve problems for both of us.

The trade is scheduled to happen Friday afternoon. Assuming everything goes to plan Strix will go to his happily-ever-after and a new-to-me GS will find its forever home with me. An update will follow as soon as everything’s settled.

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Hella 500 Fog Light Kit on R100/7

Hella 500 Fog Light Kit on R100/7

I love the look of the Airhead GS. I’ve seen pictures of the these Airheads with Hella lights on them and finally decided that Otus needed a pair mounted on his crash bars. As usual, my friends at Amazon were all too happy to sell me a set of lights, some bar mounts, and to keep from putting too much load on Otus’ stock charging system, I also ordered a pair of LED bulbs to replace the provided halogen bulbs. I’m really happy with the results!

The installation was surprisingly easy in spite of the car-focused wiring instructions. There were – at least in my head – three challenges:

  1. Where to mount the relay as my headlight bucket is pretty crowded with the Cyclops LED headlight bulb.
  2. Where to get switched power.
  3. What is #31?

I thought long and hard about all three of these and brought it all to a successful and shiny solution. Details, pictures, a blow-by-blow description of the work, along with a parts list, follow:

Buying the Stuff

The Hella 500 light kit was reasonably priced and available through Prime so that was a no-brainer. I knew I wanted to mount the lights on the crash bars so I spent quite a bit of time looking for a round clamp to fit the 1″ round crash bars. I landed on the GS Power Tube Clamp Brackets. They come in several sizes and I ordered the 1″ kit. The “sleeve” you see in the picture is actually a piece of vinyl that helps clamp the bracket tightly without scratching the bars. These are cast aluminum and I did have to drill larger holes for the light brackets the that was no big deal.

I could not find a Hella 500 kit that included LED bulbs. Another quick search of Amazon yielded this pair of H3 LED bulbs.

Installing the Lights & Wiring

Installing the brackets, the lights, and roughing in all the wiring went pretty well. I was more than a little confused about the blue wire being ground (isn’t brown the universal color for ground wire?). The other part that confused me was a portion of the wiring diagram. It listed all the relay and harness wiring clearly except for #31. There were several #31s in the diagram but that number was not in the installation key. After roughing in everything else I assumed #31 was ground so I grounded all the #31s. With everything roughed in (and a fire extinguisher at the ready!) I tested my work. My garage was awash in glorious LED goodness! Pretty sure that these lights, along with the Cyclops LED headlight, could give the sun a run for its money. I think Otus is pretty darned visible now!

The Relay

I agonized about where to put the relay. All of Otus’s wiring lives in the headlight bucket and the Cyclops bulb with its cooling fan and connector make things pretty full. The steering damper mounting brackets on Otus’ frame were another possibility but the relay and the harness were pretty crowded so I kept thinking, and thinking, and re-thinking. After a few days of thinking I landed on attaching the relay to the bottom of the right-side fuel tank stud. It pokes through the rear fuel tank mount insulator just enough to attach the relay. It also sits far enough forward that the relay fits pretty nicely. And the harness doesn’t interfere with the tool tray so that became the winner!

Dressing Down the Wires

There was PLENTY of wire attached to the harness (except for the that darned blue ground) so once I have tested the roughed-in wiring I got out the wire cutters, butt connectors, and heat-shrink tubing to dress everything down. I cut out several feet of wiring, got everything tucked, wrapped, and routed, and then butt connected and heat-shrink covered all the cuts. And, because I didn’t want to have to take it all apart again, I tested one final time before putting everything back together. The lights still worked so I was quite relieved and very happy with the results.

Collateral Enhancements

I did not anticipate the size of the switch provided with the kit. It is a round rocker switch .75″ in diameter. While the size itself isn’t a big problem, the fact that my gadget bar is constructed of .75″ square aluminum tube meant I had a size conflict. To resolve this problem I made another trip to the hardware store and picked up a length of 1″ square aluminum tube. I cut it to length (and made this one a big longer than the current one), drilled a .75″ hole using a “step” drill, and re-mounted my phone, USB power, and garage door opener to the new, thicker, and wider gadget bar.

Summary

This project turned out really well. The lights really light up the road at night and make me hella visible during the day (yeah, I did that). Oh, and they also look hella cool (since I’ve already gone there I figured why not do it again…). Your mileage may vary but if you’re thinking about adding auxiliary lights on your machine, this was a fun and relatively inexpensive way to do it!

Parts List

Pictures or it Didn’t Happen

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Pedestrian Slicer

Pedestrian Slicer

A story found on the Internets tells me that back in the day, British and European motorcycle riders would display their license numbers on metal plates attached to the front fender. In the case of a motorcycle/pedestrian accident the plate would injure the pedestrian and so the term “pedestrian slicer” was born. I live in the ‘burbs so pedestrians are a rare thing, and pedestrian slicers are just cool.

Enter Kevin Wahaus of Wahaus Advertising and Otus now sports a pedestrian slicer complete with The Two-Wheeled Tourist branding! I found a suitable pedestrian slicer blank at Carpy’s Cafe Racers, ordered it up, and handed the blank over to Kevin. Kevin + the pedestrian slicer + Adobe Illustrator resulted in the cool artwork you see in this website’s header. That same artwork with colors reversed now graces my pedestrian slicer. After a few minutes in the shop, the pedestrian slicer now graces Otus’ front fender. That’s a lot of grace, isn’t it?

Kevin has done an amazing job bringing The Two-Wheeled Tourist brand to life. The pictures that follow demonstrate. If you’re interested in custom artwork on a pedestrian slicer for your machine contact Kevin and see what he can do for you.

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