I’m making progress on getting to where I can remove the electrical system. I finished taking off, and taking apart, the rear fender assembly that includes the license plate bracket with side reflectors, tail light housing, turn signals and stalk, the cowling tool box and the rear wiring sub-harness.

You can see what I found and how I did the work here.

• 46 BMW 1983 R100RS Remove Rear Fender Assembly

Rear Tail Light, & Turn Signal Assembly, License Plate Bracket & Rubber Mud Flap

Tail Light Reflector Wiring Detail

Rear Wiring Sub-Harness Plug Location

Rear Fender Assembly Removed

Due to the blizzard in Denver yesterday, I had time to finish up some documentation on the project so far and post it to my site. The focus has been on the fairing disassembly and a catalog of the fairing mounting hardware and where it goes. I found existing parts fiche aren’t very helpful about what fasteners go where.

Here is a link to two new publications.

52 BMW 1983 R100RS Remove Seat and Seat Cowling
46 BMW 1983 R100RS Remove Fairing, Dash, Volt Meter, Clock, Ignition Switch

I included a couple videos, one of which shows details of how all the fairing panels are connected.

Here is how the bike looks now.

Tank, Seat, Fairing & Brackets Removed

And the stack of bins the parts are going in, which will increase as I get down to the frame.

Bins for Disassembled Bike Parts

I bought a 1983 R100RS in January 2015 just before I retired so I would have a project to work on. At that time, this was to be the RS I always wanted. I fell in love with the RS the first time I saw one in 1977, so what better way to kickoff my new retired life than to own one and restore it.

In 2015, I corrected several problems and did some needed work:

• Fixed a flickering oil pressure light
• Fixed a flickering charge indicator light
• Rebuilt and refinished the carburetors
• Replaced the alternator brushes
• Replaced the broken rubber diode board mounts with metal ones along with the diode board
• Fixed all the cracks in the panniers and welded the broken pannier frame weld.

After that work, I rode the bike for a few months and several hundred miles and had every intent of finishing the rebuild when winter came. But, I got side tracked with some needed refresh work on my 1975 R75/6. And then in early 2016, someone put a first year, 1977 R100RS up for sale. Long story short, I bought it. And then I decided to restore it so I could ride it to the 40th R100RS anniversary rally in Pennsylvania in September, 2017.  I posted a couple blogs about that ride and was asked to publish three articles about the build and the ride in the BMW MOA magazine. Of course, I published a lot of documentation about that build here:

• 1977 BMW R100RS Rebuild: Project Index

So, it’s now March 1, 2019 and I’m ready to restart the build of the 1983 RS. But, I changed direction from restoring it to doing a resto-mod and converting it into an RT. I refer to this as the R100RS/T build project.

I revised my original build plan to reflect the new end-state and I added a video walk-around of the beginning condition of the bike. It’s a whole lot cleaner than when I brought it home in 2015.

I plan to make a number of modifications to improve performance, handling and appearance beyond the conversion from an RS to an RT, I summarized what my plan is in the updated build plan you can find here:

• 00 BMW 1983 R100RS/T Pre-Build Inspection & Build Plan

As on all my projects, I’ll continue to add links to how I did various parts of the project to this project build index:

• 1983 BMW R100RS/T Build: Project Index

So, stay tuned.

One indicator bulb in the instrument housing was not lighting. I pulled the instrument cluster out and tested the bulb which was good. However the foil trace that goes on the tab inside the hole in the circuit board the bulb holder plugs into had broken.

The Tab The Bulb Holder Lead Touches-Copper Foil Is Missing

I used some copper foil to make a repair and I documented how I did it here.

• 62 BMW 1983 R100RS Repair Instrument Circuit Board

The same technique can be used to repair any of these boards when a cracked or broken foil trace causes intermittent or complete bulb failure bulb. But sometimes the circuit board is broken, badly corroded and it isn’t salvageable.

BMW no longer sells the circuit board but you can find used ones for sale on eBay and some are in good condition. However someone took the time and effort to design a replacement light housing and circuit board that uses LED lights instead of the original incandescent bulbs. For a badly damaged circuit board where the simple fix I made is insufficient, these replacement boards will likely do the trick. I’ve not had occasion to install one of these, but you will find information about them here:

• Katdash Airhead Instrument Lighting