R850R rebuild thread

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Lucian_rider
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R850R rebuild thread

Post by Lucian_rider »

As I am a new member I'm not sure if these types of threads are frowned upon but in case its not I will document my refurbishment of a retired ex St. Lucia Police R850R.
First off, maybe someone can sort this out for me. The bike was made in December 2004, does that make it a 2004 or a 2005 model??

Anyway I purchased the bike via a sealed Tender application and got it for $2,890.00 US dollars. It is a non runner with supposedly no spark nor fuel pump operation.
I picked it up yesterday from the police station and as soon as I got it home gave it a thorough wash as it was filthy!
Here are some photos from this morning after it sat outside for the night...

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Only 9,880 KM on the clock!

So I managed to convince the wife to let me wheel the bike through the house and store it temporarily in the front balcony as my garage is a work and store room with no available space... :(
I will have to make a shed at the front of the house to store the bike when its finished.

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I started stripping off all of the crash bars which are kind of flimsy but also the chrome is coming off and is getting rusty so I would rather get rid of them. I will probably put plastic head guards on before I ride it. The picture above shows the tail box off with the flashing light power supply which I ripped out in short order as the lights are already gone...

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Will need a new battery and air cleaner. I will eventually be removing the sub frame as I want to paint it silver to match the engine because I think it looks better when the body work is painted black. The handgrips are shot, where can I get a new set??

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It looks so much better with the crash bars removed!! But man that oil cooler is a huge ugly wart!! I would love to move it to the front of the engine, anyone knows of a relocation kit?

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Needs new tires, these are the originals. Also the rear brake pads are worn, I will change the fronts as well but they look OK.

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I've taken the headlight off, I will look into getting it re-chromed as it is starting to go and looks a bit poo. Whilst I was in there under the light I found that the wiring harness was zipped tied as has been found to cause breaks in the wiring harness. I believe this is what has caused the bike to be a non runner. I hooked up a car battery via jumpers and cranked it over, sure enough no spark. But I played around with the wires where it was tied and tried again and SPARK!!! I sprayed some propellent gas from an upside down bug spray can into the air intake and the engine fired right up!! For just a few seconds obviously!!! The fuel pump looks a mess so I will check it tomorrow and see if it actually works but I will probably need to get a new one.

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I removed the belt cover to check out the condition of the belt and to turn the engine over with a spanner... I had to remove the lower shock bolt as the cover would not slip past the spring.

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The muffler is in reasonably good condition but is looking as though it will start to rust. Does anyone know if the outer casing (heat shield) comes off? If it does I will look into getting it re-chromed as well.

Well that's it so far, I'm really excited to own a BMW for what is I consider to be stupid money as bikes are quite expensive here in St. Lucia due to high import duties and ownership is difficult because there are no insurance companies that will comprehensively insure bikes. This makes getting a loan difficult without another form of collateral.
Third party insurance is quite cheap though.
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peels
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by peels »

awesome..

I certainly dont "frown upon" a thread like this.

GOOD LUCK
2002 R1150R. Helmets save more lives than loud pipes.
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peels
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by peels »

fun little read. prob better here than your other thread.

http://www.zx11.nl/r850r/diary.htm
2002 R1150R. Helmets save more lives than loud pipes.
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vwdoctor
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by vwdoctor »

That radiator setup looks like police only. There is a siren on the other side so it was the only way. If you lose the siren you should be able to put regular R850 (or even R1100) oil coolers there.
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Lucian_rider
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by Lucian_rider »

Thanks for the replies!!

I connected the fuel pump up to the supply and return hoses and dropped the pump into an open container of gas and she fired up after about four attempts!!
It took a while before she would idle and after running for about 10 minutes I noticed that the left pipe and cylinder was a lot hotter than the right. Can this be a throttle body balance issue or injector being clogged due to years of non use.

Here is a video showing it running. I'm rather stunned that there is no way to embed Youtube videos on this forum?? I have my own phpBB forum so I know how easy it is to enable that function!!

http://youtu.be/GXBeM5ycVbA
Lucian_rider
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by Lucian_rider »

This forum is pretty dead but it is high time that I updated this thread as I completed the rebuild back in February and have been enjoying my bike immensly!

Here are some photos taken during the rebuild:

I decided that I would strip down the bike to accomplish two things:
Remove the rear subframe so that I could paint it silver to match the engine and contrast with the new black body work. The frame tubing was also rusted pretty much all over so it needed painting anyway.

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Most of the pictures here were taken to help with the reassembly. I removed all of the police wiring looms, most of which were bare wires because the plastic sheaves had deteriorated and fallen off creating a real mess.

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I had already removed the exhaust silencer at this point and obviously the seat and rear police box.

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Subframe finally removed leaving the fuse box and air box still in place, it will be removed later and painted with bumper paint.

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I had removed all of the switch gear from the handlebars and the bar would come off to be repainted. The headlight and various brackets at the front were removed as well.

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The air intake box was looking really weather beaten!

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Damn it was a look of work to get the subframe out!

Moving on....

So I decided to remove the gearbox as I had read all of the horror stories about the input splines and leaking clutch slave cylinder:
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I was somewhat disturbed when I removed the slave cylinder and was faced with this!! I assumed it was a leaking slave and ordered a rebuild kit from Beemer Bone Yard along with a new clutch plate. It turns out that it was the oil seal at the end of the gearbox input shaft that was leaking so I ended up having to order both seals for each end of the input shaft.

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Surprisingly the oil had not traveled up the push rod and contaminated the clutch!!

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Getting closer to splitting the gearbox.

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More prep before splitting...

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I supported the bike on a transmission jack, worked a treat!!

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Finally apart, the splines were in perfect condition. I bought some spline grease from Beemer Bone Yard for the reassembly.

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I had a friend help with the separation! It would not have been easy by myself!

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A close up of the flywheel.

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The clutch turned out to be very worn and for a bike with only 9,881 KM!! I'm still trying to figure out how they managed to do that!!
I reused the pressure plate and only purchased a new standard clutch from Beemer.

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What a mess!! The wife was none to happy by this point!!

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Not much left of the bike at this point in time!!!

And finally to wrap up this installment:

I removed all of the exhaust pipes, cat with collector and the silencer so that I could give them all a good clean and polish. The silencer was fairly easy to get back to looking good after I removed the main tubular heat shield and the small clamp and shield where it mounts to the collector. I used an angle grinder with a polishing wheel and various grades of metal polish to restore the luster.
The headers were another story however! It turns out that they are stainless tubing with chrome plating. The chrome has corroded off which can be seen in one of the close ups. I sanded them down with varying grades of wet and dry sand paper until clean of surface corrosion and dirt. I then polished the hell out of them until my hands were numb. All told I probably spent 3 hours of sanding and polishing of the exhaust parts. I got some heat resistant black paint and painted the end cap of the muffler to finish it all off. New header gaskets went on and I overhauled the clamp bolts by running a tap through the captive nuts and a die over the bolts as they were all very difficult to remove due to rust. Anti-sieze grease went on as well.

After six months the headers don't look terribly good so I when I next go to the US I will remove them so that I can carry them with me to have them silver ceramic coated. Hopefully that will keep them looking good for much longer.

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Sanding one side to compare it to how they looked before.

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More of the same.

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A close up of the corroded chrome finish.

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Starting to look like something!

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The finished product.

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peels
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by peels »

clutches get worn from a LOT of stop/go, not miles. Much more heat generated that way. ESPECIALLY dry clutches.

I know this from a restored mustang that was used for parades and cruise nights only. 1500 miles on the thing in 5 yrs. clutch was TOAST.

Police bikes are bad for this. Sometimes even used in parades.

looking forward to your finished project
2002 R1150R. Helmets save more lives than loud pipes.
janSolo
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Re: R850R rebuild thread

Post by janSolo »

Any news on this bike?
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