R100GS Paris Dakar refurbishment after 85,000 miles, 21/12/09, Transversality

December 21, 2009

R100GS Paris Dakar refurbishment after 85,000 miles

I'm currently working on a more serious refurbishment of my BMW R100GS Paris Dakar. I started to get minor electrical faults in the headlights and instruments. On the PD they the front end is wrapped in an un-necessarily big and complicated plastic fairing. It even has large metal crash bars wrapped around it. I've never liked the fairing, and when I realised that it is quite a barrier to doing repairs on the electrics, I decided to remove it. It took much effort to remove! I bought the bike because it is supposed to be easy to work on, simple and reliable. Now that the fairing is gone, it's closer to that ideal. Once it was off, I put the whole assemblage on the scales (including instruments and crash bar). It weighs 10 kilos! A substantial weight for an off road bike.

The instruments will be replaced by an all-in-one Acewell digital system. They are available, along with a speedo cable for BMW, from Boxxerparts in Germany. The headlight will be replaced with a pair of small round "streetfighter" style headlights mounted to the fork stanchions with mini-indicators.

With the fairing, fuel tank, seats and side panels off, I could see just how bad the rest of the bike is. It's covered in 85,000 miles of road grime. My earlier attempts at anti-rust-coating and painting the frame are now being surpassed by rusting. The worst aspect is the wiring harness. The fabric cover is soaked with oil, wearing through and unwrapping:

Wiring harness and rust

The only real solution is to strip the whole bike down, clean it thoroughly, restore the wiring harness, and get the frame bead-blasted and powder coated. I'm half way through that. The next step is to remove the forks, engine and transmission. I'll need some help with the engine, and will probably struggle to get the steering bearings out of the stem.

GS stripped down from front