Build quality is a bone of contention with most bikes these days , not least BMW - penny pinching by outsourcing to China etc has meant that quality has really suffered in recent years .
Recently I needed to replace the exhaust to cylinder gaskets on mine [ 1100 RT , 65 K 98 plate ] , and how about this for a tale of woe [ I posted it on another forum ]
Some words from Andy .......
Swapping the exhaust gaskets should be an easy task, just drop the pipes, remove old gaskets, install new and refit - half an hour tops...
Steve's engine was still warm when I first tried this - ideal for exhuast stud-nuts. The RT has acorn nuts, or rather had acorn nuts - the top of the nut was corroded off. I soaked the studs in pentrant and we had a coffee, to give it time to work. The first stud snapped off clean with only minor force being applied. Bugger. I advised Steve that the others were likely to go the same way and that he should consider getting a decent mechanic, with the right tools and experience to look at it. A few miles from my house is North Leicester Motorcycles, who specialise in old Italian bikes and modern Morini/MV Agusta. A core part of their business is restoration - turning vaguely red piles of rust back into pristine motorcycles. If anyone can remove a rusty nut, it is them.
Steve's bike was duly booked into the workshop for this , with a 1-2 hour estimate for the job.
Saturday arrived and we stripped the tupperware form Steve's bike and fitted the bullet LEDs. We then took it round to NLM, dropped it into the workshop and went for a drool in the shop.
Loads of interesting vintage and veteran Italian bikes - MV, Morini, Guzzi, Parillia - all sorts.
We then went back to my place, where my bike is in bits having a new swing-arm and shock fitted, post pot-hole encounter.
The phone rang and we got the news that a further three studs had snapped and they had run out of time. NLM are closed on Mondays, so they set to work again on Tuesday. The old studs were described as crap - stud extractors just broke them off further down. All four damaged studs had to be drilled out - steel studs in an alloy head - so a tricky job. The studs are 25mm into the heads. Once out, the holes were drilled and tapped over-size and Time-serts fitted. These are a steel sleeve, so the new studs are not steel-into-alloy and will not weld into place.
With new inserts, studs, nuts washers and copperslip, the job took 6 hours to complete. Oh, and Ollie says if you want another one doing, the answer is NO!
Still, 6 hours at BMW dealer prices would be somewhat higher methinks - if they did not simply write off the heads and tell us that new ones were needed.
Yet again Andy has pulled out all the stops to get me back on the bike , and given up his time and expertise for free and without complaint - Andy [ my mate - owns an 04 plate 1150 RT ] can you the technical run down , but the bike ended up having to go to a local garage [ they are proper bike folk ] , and the cost eventually came out at just under £270.00 [ Not bad for more than 6 hours labour .......... which , if it had been done at a dealership , would have been at least double !! [ Pidcocks BMW charge £85.00 per hour ]
Needless to say , I can't thank Andy enough [ yet again ] , as he not only helped me strip the bike before we went to the garage [ saves money as the garage would only have to do it anyway to get to the exhausts properly ] , but then also ran me home , a round trip of 180 miles , after the garage ran out of time on the day as they shut mid pm on a saturday .
Andy also collectied the bike for me today after work , then rode it home [ it must look odd without the fairing panels on ] , and I've just got home after a return trip to collect it .
Whilst we were at the North Leicester Garage we were drooling over some new Moto Morini's - the Gran passo 1200 [ GS type bike ] - 3 year warranty , 6000 mile service interval at a quoted price of £150 all in , superb build quality - very tempting !!
Steve
