I removed the twin front disk brake system and the rear single disk brake system. The rear brake pedal assembly had a kludge repair to fix the wobbling brake lever. And, the rust was so bad on the rear master cylinder linkage that I couldn’t remove the rear brake pedal and had to remove the master cylinder and rear brake pedal together.
After I removed the fairing and rear fender assembly, I removed the electrical system including the main and sub wiring harnesses and the electrical components attached to the frame.
As I did this work, I put together a video tour of the electrical system.
VIDEO: Remove Electrical Wiring & Components
And, you can read all about how I did this work here.
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.
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.
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:
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:
