I started on this project last October and have been chipping away at it as time permitted. Last week, I had a four day weekend and spent time preparing for painting, aka, priming and sanding. This has taken much longer than I expected, and I’ve been recalling Robert Pirsig’s “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“. I’ve experienced several personal “gumption traps” and found that “being in the moment” is not easy to accomplish in a consistent manner.
The paint preparation phase has exposed a couple bad habits I have. The first is hurrying, the second is not thinking it through and the third is pushing to complete when I should take a break. These are related, and if I recall, are called out by Pirsig as examples of gumption traps that impede attaining quality.
Hurrying usually results in getting “behinder” due to mistakes and the rework they require. On top of that, you’re attitude is not postive due to your inner voice of self critisim getting pretty loud. The fun factor goes way down.
If you don’t stop and visualize getting from what you have to what you want, you can find the path you take is the wrong one, or you aren’t taking the shortest path to do the work. This is more the case when I have been working on disassembly and assembly of the Grey Ghost, but I find it happening in paint preparation as well. For example, I’ve forgotten to clean spray nozzles, not had the gloves on, forgotten to clean the parts with Windex prior to priming and each of those are the result of not thinking about how to get from what I have in front of me to where I want to end up BEFORE starting the work.
I also find that “getting done” is a slippery gumption trap. Getting done, of course, has value and does provide gratification. But, the journey also has great reward, and a journey done well has an even greater sense of accomplishment. I’m starting to figure out when the “let’s get done” motivation is out of control. And every time I don’t listen to that inner voice that says “Hey, you’re getting tired of what you are doing, take a break”, and keep on working, inevitably s&^%t happens.
I think there are days when you should not work on a project. This past Monday was one of those. I managed to break the coffee pot, assemble something backwards and put my finger prints in wet primer … all in about an hours time. I quit for the day at that point. It seems that Monday was not a day where I was “in the moment”; perhaps I was distracted by thoughts of a family get together later that day, or thoughts about the impending return to work drowned out “being in the moment”. For whatever reasons, the Zen state required for good quality was not in evidence.
Here is an observation about our ability to recognize the qualityof our work. Paint preparation (the mundane) really shows how quality (the sublime) is achieved: many small things done well result in high quality. I’ve sanded several areas and had to refill them because the surface was not the right contour or small defects were evident in the body putty. Each time I re-primed those areas, I’d think “There, that’s got it”. And then I’d re-sand it and see another small defect I had missed, and I’d say “Well, that’s not enough to make any difference”. But, the next day, I’d look at that area again, and it was clear it wasn’t up to snuff. So, I’d go back and put more body putty over it, prime it and sand it again. In one area of the tank, I’ve had to repeat that process 4 times.
My point is we see quality, or the lack of it, in an instant. But, we also have built-in “reality filters” that allow us to pretend we achieved it when we really haven’t. The pursuit of quality demands an ego-less perspective on our own work, which for me, isn’t easy to achieve. There is an absolute ego-less honesty required about your work if you want it have high quality. Achieving that honesty is worth the journey, and in no small part, it is what Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is all about.
My high school, Hopkins, is a prep school in New Haven, CT. It celebrated it’s 350th anniversary this year (yeap, it was founded in 1660, 50 years after Galileo saw the moons of Jupiter making the sun center of the solar system and 1 year before Newton entered Trinity College at Cambridge and 27 years before he published his laws of motion and gravitation in 1687) which coincided with my 40th reunion. So, I took advantage of too much vacation accrual, and planned a ride out and back. By adding a few jogs to the route, I could try an Iron Butt Saddle Sore 2000 ride. The SS2000 is 2000 miles in 48 hours, or less. I’ve done a couple of SS1000 and one Bun Burner 1500 which is 1500 miles in 36 hours. So, I figured this wouldn’t be too tough a challenge.
My departure was set for Wednesday, June 9th with a target of being in New Haven no later than Friday afternoon to attend our class get together at a local pub. The formal reunion would be on Saturday. I had three days to get there with a plan to do it in 39 1/2 hours including sleep at the 1005 mile mark, almost exactly half way. I had planned 8 hours of sleep with some time to eat dinner and get some breakfast before starting the next day’s 1000 mile ride. The total distance would be 2021 miles according to Microsoft Streets and Trips.
The route went north from my home in Arvada, CO on I-25 to Cheyenne where I took I-80 through Nebraska, Iowa, and then I-74 to just south of Peoria, Illinois the first day. I budgeted 9.5 hours for sleep and a dinner stop that night. The second day the route continued on I-74 picking up I-70 at Indianapolis, then across Indiana to Columbus, Ohio where I picked up I-71 to I-76 just outside Akron, Ohio. From there, I would continue on to the intersection with I-80 in Pennsylvania to I-287 in New York and finally to I-95 to the final destination in New Haven, CT. Here’s a map of the route showing planned gas and sleep stops.
I planned to do the trip from twilight to dusk avoiding night driving. Since June 9th is close to the summer solstice, I would get maximum daylight – 5:15 am to about 9:00 pm.
I got my starting gas receipt at 5:20 am and my start witness, my youngest son, signed off in time to roll out of the station at exactly 5:30 am. The ride to Cheyenne was uneventful. I did encounter some light sprinkles just before getting to Cheyenne, but the sky cleared off as I headed west on I-80.
I had a list of stops with times that I created on a spreadsheet and at Cheyenne, figured out I had an error in my time arithmetic so the sheet was about 30 minutes ahead of my real arrival times at gas stops. As in past long distance rides, my stops alternated between 10 and 20 minute stops. 10 minutes is about right to get gassed and visit the rest room and may be grab some munchies out of the saddle bag. The 20 minute stop allows more time to get coffee if I want and to eat more and stretch out and exercise any tired muscles. Each stop is timed at about 200 – 220 miles, so depending on speed limits, that’s about 2.5 to 3 hours between them. I’ve found I can maintain that rhythm for 18-20 hours at a time if need be.
The only problem on day 1 was a detour in Davenport, IA due to the I-80 bridge over the Mississippi being closed. The detour took I-280 over the river which added about 15 miles to the trip. I hit the hotel about 20 mins late, grabbed a Burger King #1 meal, ate in my room and arranged for a 5:00 am wake up call for the next morning. Here’s the GPS record of Day1. You can ignore the “Maximum Speed” as that’s an artifact of the GPS. It frequently records an unobtainable maximum speed when it can’t get a satellite lock. The GPS gets turned off when the engine is off, so total time was a bit more than 15 hours.
On day 2, I had to add air to the tires as the elevation had dropped from 5300 feet to about 800 feet. So that added a few minutes to the moring preparations. Oil consumption at 1005 miles was about 1/16 of a quart.
As I headed out, I enjoyed the sunrise and cool temperatures on my way to Champaign, IL. Then on to Indiannapolis, IN.
I hadn’t expected the sad state of the freeway system in Indiannapolis. It was a huge mess and I got lost at one point due to construction detours. At the gas stop outside town, I could hear an unusual sound. I checked the bike and found the front fender was rubbing on the front tire. The two rear bolts that attached to the forks had both come out. I had mounted new tires the day before I left and I guess I managed to not get either bolt tight. I grabbed duct tape and tried to secure the fender adding a good 15 – 20 minutes to a planned 10 minute stop. As I got to each successive gas stop, I found the tape had not held and tried adding more. This is the final duck tape kludge I ended up with at the 3rd gas stop.
Toward the end of the day, I remembered I had some wire in my tool kit and ran some through the bolt holes and the fender which took the strain off the duck tape and kept the fender from tipping forward toward the tire. Lesson learned. Use bailing wire for this kind of repair.
When I got to the Tappan ZeeBridge over the Hudson River in New York, I was about an hour behind due to the multiple 20 min gas stops to futz with the front fender. When I took the exit to I-95 just before Greenwich, CT, all traffic stopped. All lanes, but one, on I-95 were closed for construction. And, they did that two more times in 40 miles. Each time there was a large traffic jam which added another 30 minutes or so lost before getting to my final gas station … which was closed by that time. I found one open about 5 miles up the road and clocked out at about 11:30 pm, June 10. The second 1000 miles took a bit more than 17 hours. Total time for the 2021 mile trip including sleep was about 40 hours 30 minutes and the average speed for the entire trip was 40 MPH. I slept quite well on Thursday night 🙂
The Return Trip
For the return trip 2 days later, I visited the family cemetery on my mother’s side north of New York City where my mom and dad currently reside, then headed south through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and then home. That route was about 2100 miles and I took 3 days to complete it riding about 700 miles a day. Here’s the route and some pictures along the way.
My Prep School – Founded 1660
Yeap, 350 years old, and I was a member of the 1st graduating class 🙂
Replica of the original school building originally on the New Haven green.
My mother’s side of the family is buried in Phillipsport, NY which is just a street sign these days.
The “Sherwood” plot and Cookie Monster, my BMW R1150-RS. The Sherwoods are decended from the “Sherwood Forest” owners in England.
Over the Memorial Day weekend, I took on the task of rebuilding the carburetors. The right side carb had a broken float pin boss and I had to get a used R75/5 carb body 5 years ago to get it running again. The right side has not been happy and when the heads and valves were redone, the right side exhaust was in worse shape than the left which are signs of lean running on the right side. With 103,000 and 35 years on the left side carb, and no full rebuild in that time (new floats and float needles of course, but no rebuild) it was time to get them back in condition.
To keep parts together, prevent confusing the parts from the left with those from the right side and to always have a correctly assembled carb to refer to, I rebuilt them one at a time starting with the right side. Since I was going to reinstall the original 75/6 right side carb, I would be stripping all parts off the old 75/5 carb body, replacing with new parts in the rebuild kit, and reusing the other parts. The R75/6 body had been sent to the Bing Agency to repair the broken float boss. Here are the before and after pictures.
Although Bing cleaned the carb, I polished it up a bit more with aluminum cleaner, steel wool and metal polish while I waited for parts to soak in solvent.
The first step was to remove the enricher from the R75/5 body taking out the 4 machine screws. As you can see in the picture, this is the Bad part — as in dirty. But it gets worse.
Next, I took off the float bowl … and now you can see the Uglypart … a nice bunch of glop in the bottom … not a good sign of a healthy carb by any means. I’m suspicious that the float was starting to dissolve which can happen with our methanol laced fuels. Corrosion is also clearly evident on the washer underneath the main jet in the center of the carb and the gasket between the float bowl and carb body is complete toast.
I focused on the enricher rebuild first. I dissembled it, and took pictures of the parts order so I wouldn’t make a mistake. I also have the Bing Agency carb book with full exploded view diagrams which is very helpful. I’ll refer to part numbers in this diagram in the following material.
I removed the old O-ring (pretty cracked) (#26) and soaked in parts washer solvent for several hours.I cleaned up the housing and lever using a wire wheel, aluminum cleaner and then metal polish. I used some masking tape to cover the threads of the disk (#47) to make it easier to get the O-ring (#49) on and not tear it in the process. I have some steel picks, one of which has a “C” shaped end that I hooked under the O-ring so I could pull it over the threads and onto the slot.
I found details in Snowbum’son-line BMW reference material on how to ensure the enricher is assembled correctly. There are two articles as well as another on the R75/5 Bing carburetor. As is the case with his writing, read slowly and carefully and be prepared to be told the same thing three times in different places and different ways. The right side housing has the curved passage on the right.
You should confirm you have the correct disk. The inside of the shaft is stamped with “R” for right and “W” for wrong … :-), actually, it’s “L” for left.
Then the disk is inserted as shown, with the slot at the 8:00 position and the little holes at the 1:00 position.
Then I assembled the housing putting the new gasket (#50) between it and the carb body. I put a small amount of silicone grease on the O-ring and a tiny amount of antiseize on the threads of each of the screws (#51). Note there is a dimple on one side of the shaft. This should be closer to right side on the right carburator.
The handle goes on the shaft with the nut (#52d) to attach the choke cable facing you. The shaft handle goes between the two verticle pins and the shaft should be pointing to the fuel spigot on the carb.
I put a tiny bit of antiseize on the brass threads of the shaft and then tightended up the nut.
The next step was to remove the throttle linkage (#27, #28), spring (#35) and throttle linkeage bracket (#31).
Then I remove the throttle plate (#23) and throttle shaft (#24). The screws (#25) holding the throttle plate to the shaft are peened over and are hard to remove. I was not able to remove one of them. So, I ground off the end of the screw on the back side of the throttle plate with a grinding stone on the end of a Dremel tool, and drilled a pilot hole for my smallest easy out and extracted it. The carb rebuild kit comes with new screws, so no worrries.
I soaked the parts in solvent for several hours and then cleaned them. I polished the throttle linkage parts and springs with a wire wheel, steel wool, aluminium cleaner and then finished them off with metal polish. I replaced the O-ring on the throttle shaft using tape over the threads and put a bit of silicone grease on the O-ring. Then I pushed the shaft back into the throttle body. It took a couple of tries to get the throttle plate into the slot in the shaft, so be patient and don’t force it. I found assembling the throttle linkage bracket (#31) into the groove on the throttle shaft and then tightening the bracket screws to the carb body ensured the shaft would not bind. I didn’t do that the first time and it bound up as there is some laterial play in the throttle shaft. I used lock tight on the throttle plate screws to ensure they wouldn’t come loose … if they do, they go right into the engine 🙁 I also put a tiny bit of grease on the groove in the throttle shaft to keep things turning smoothly.
Next I removed the top, pulled out the slide with the jet needle and removed the metal ring (#17) holding the rubber diaphram to the top of the slide. There is a new jet needle (#3) in the rebuild kit and a new needle jet (#4). The needle vibrates and wearing the needle jet and the needle. I could see grooves in the needle.
Then, I took out all the jets from the bottom of the carb. When I reassembled the main jet, it cracked in two. It likely had a crack in it before hand. I suspect a cracked main jet didn’t help carburetion any 🙁 I have extra main jets, so no problem.
Each of the jets I removed (#7, #5, #1, #2, #3, #10) was very dirty. Here is the crud that was inside the needle jet (#3) and the atomizer (#2).
I had read on Snowbum’s posting that Berryman B-12 Chemtool was very good at removing crud and fuel varnish, but extremely nasty stuff. I bought some and wore my nitrile gloves when handling it. When I fished the parts out of the container, the nitrile started to wrinkle … the next day, the finger parts had completely dissolved … nasty indeed.
After all the internal jets were cleaned, I put new O-rings on them again using the masking tape trick and “C” shaped steel pick to pull them into the groove on the jets. I broke one O-ring, but my handy Ace hardware had a metric replacement :-). I put a tiny bit of antiseize on the jet threads as they are brass and screw into pot metal threads. I installed the new needle jet (#3) and atomizer (#2). The Bing exploded view diagram and the picture I took helped me make sure these went together in the right order. I installed the new float (#40), float needle (#4) and float hinge pin (#1 from the rebuild kit and then put in the new cork gasket (#46) into the groove in the bottom of the float bowl.
I reassembled the slide (#13) with the new diaphram (#16) from the rebuild kit putting a dab of antiseize on the screws. I added the internal spring (#22) which was not part of the original carb assemble. Clem supplied these and said adding them would improve gas mileage.
Then, I put the top (#20) back on and put a tiny amount of antiseize on the four screws (#21) that secure it to the carb body.
Now for the Good part. Here are “before” and “after” pictures showing the rebuilt right side carb and the yet to be rebuilt left side carb. Definitely night and day.
I did it all one more time on the left carb. Both were in need of attention, so I am very hopeful they will operate much better and the bike run a lot smoother.
The past week I’ve been working on a number of items. First order of business was to put the shocks back together and mount them. I clamped the shock in a vice an put the preload adjuster, retainer and shock together with the tighter windings of the spring at the bottom.
In lieu of the BMW shock spring compressor, I use two 1 inch hose clamps to compress the springs so I can put the top shock mount bracket on. Thread the hose clamps through three of the spring coils near the top and then tight to compress the springs leaving a clear space between the top of the spring and the bottom of the mounting bracket.
I could push the aluminum cover down a bit more to insert the 10 mm wrench on the shock rod and a screw driver through the eye bolt to tighten the top mounting bracket.
To mount the shocks, I used a jack stand and some wood blocks to hold up the rear end so I could insert the top bolt on the right side shock. Since that side has a stud for the bottom mounting, its easier to mount the right side first.
With the rear shocks mounted, I took apart the instruments, controls and handlebar to clean them up. I also needed to remove the Windjammer V wiring harness from the headlight shell so I could reinstall the original headlight wiring harness.
I painted the headlight “ears”, and cleaned and polished the mounting hardware before putting the R90S turn signal brackets and fairing mounting brackets on.
I wired in the turn signal wires and the old front headlight wiring harness and the neutral switch that allows you to start the engine when the clutch is pulled in. I took some time reviewing the wiring diagrams to find out where the connectors go inside the headlight shell. I also had to modify some of the connectors to the correct “L” shaped connector with insulator boot. It does look like “wiring spaghetti” inside the headlight shell 🙂
The final task was to mount the speedometer/tach, handlebars, controls and atach the new throttle cables and the existing clutch and front brake cables to the levers. It took some time and couple of disassemble/reassembly tries to get the wiring and cables routed correctly. For some reason, its too easy to get one thing going the wrong way with that many cables and wiring harness to contend with. Here’s the final handlebar and control assembly’s mounted. The new paint stands out compared to the dulled plastic of the switch assembles. I’ll try more Amour All and see if I can brighten the plastic on the controls.
At this point, the engine top end, carburetor rebuild and new electronic ignition installation are the remaining mechanical tasks. And, the painting project of course, is still left to be done. But, the Silver Ghost is coming back together.
When I had the front end rebuilt, I had 11 rib fork boots not the standard 13 rib. So, I removed the tubes and mounted the correct 13 rib boots. I also cleaned up the snowflake cast front rim and the disk brake rotor assemble and had repainted the brake caliper which was showing aluminum instead of the original black paint.
Here are the pictures of the front end with the incorrect 11 rib and the correct 13 rib fork boots. It looks much better with the correct ones installed.
I loosely mounted the fork brace and then mounted the front wheel . I pushed up and down on the forks a couple of times to ensure alignment and then tightened the axle nut and locking bolts. Again, I pumped the front forks up and down and then tighted the fork brace bolts to the correct torque settings.
I bought new disk brake pads and also had to buy a new brake pipe as corrosion had made one of the nuts too small to fit a standard 10 mm ring spanner. The two pads are different. The one that goes into the piston side (right one in the photo) of the caliper has a small hole in it and the fixed pad (left one in the photo) has two raised castings that center the pad in the circular caliper cut out.
The brake pad kits come with a new O-ring that goes inside the center of the caliper piston as shown and a new clip for securing the fixed pad onto the back of the caliper.
Insert the pad into the piston first. The curved end of the pad goes to the back of the caliper. Then, put the pad into the fixed side of the caliper and secure it with the clip on the back with the open ends facing down as shown.
Next, I mounted the caliber to the fork using the excentric pin to hold it in place. Finally, I connected the new brake pipe to the braided steel brake line. Here’s the completed front end and wheel with brake caliper.
I spent a couple of hours polishing the aluminum engine cases with Autosol metal cleaner, metal polish and finished up with Aluminum oil. Now it really matches the transmission and rear drive and has a nice satin patina to it.
Finally, I mounted the subframe. I found mounting it using the bottom bolts first makes it easier to force the top legs into the top of the spine. Then I used a piece of wire and threaded it through the rear hole to the front hole in the subframe. I wrapped the wiring harness with duct tape and twisted the wire around that and pulled the wire harness back through the subframe tubing to the rear. Its all ready for the rear turn signals, but I have to finish painting the rear fender before I can mount them as they attach to the fender.
Here’s the Grey Ghost with the subframe mounted to the frame along with the key lock and the side handle for lifting the bike onto the center stand. It’s starting to more like a motorcycle. I just need to slap the rear shocks back on when I get the chance.
