ACHTUNG!!!

those Germans sure are proud of their OEM parts
I work for a Deutsch GMBH equipment manufacturer in the states, and yes the Germans are notorious for high parts cost, market control, and proprietary fitment. But they make superior stuff. As we say in our industry; You can pay average prices for average equipment, or you can pay extraordinary prices for extraordinary equipment. I don't work for this company because they don't make money :devil:.
 
these engines aren't like yer Japanese rubbish,

Raymond my good man, you have misspelled the key word in that sentence.....

......"aren't" should of course be "ain't".

In Windsor Ontario, Chrysler operates their big Windsor Assembly Plant (WAP) and it builds the Pacifica minivan. Back some years ago, the products were known as the Dodge Caravan and its twin, the Plymouth Voyager as well as the up-market Chrysler version. They were entirely the same except for the badging - but the Chrysler variants had more leather and electronics.

....and yet, I would run into people who would insist that Plymouths were crummy vehicles and they would always be a "Dodge man - just like their Dad".

No matter how hard I tried, I could not get them to believe that the Dodge and the Plymouth minivans were built on the same assembly line by the same people using the same parts on the same day. They'd go down the line one after the other with no (ZERO) distinction between them.

In fact, except for a digit or two different in the VIN code, you couldn't tell which brand the vehicle would be until the badging was applied very late in the assembly process - and every once in a while, a Dodge would emerge with Plymouth hubcaps or vice-versa.
 
Raymond my good man, you have misspelled the key word in that sentence.....

......"aren't" should of course be "ain't".

Well, I need to point out this weren't in the Mittle of America, the Corporate Culture of H-D had percolated all the way to Surrey! That's Surrey, England, not Surrey, BC, BTW.
 
....and yet, I would run into people who would insist that Plymouths were crummy vehicles and they would always be a "Dodge man - just like their Dad".
Never mess with a man who drives a Dodge. He's pissed off already. Al Bundy drove a Dodge on the TV show, Married, With Children. It was part of the joke.

OK, back to the BMW.
 
Admittedly, Honda, and after a while, Kawasaki made high quality big 4 stroke bikes in the 70s. But I reckon BMW were at least as well made, but came at high cost. And for long distance rapid touring, very few bikes could match an R100RS back in the 70s. Goldwings had high speed stability issues, and the other japanese offerings were not that great in that respect either. Maybe a Guzzi Le Mans was the next alternative for serious mile munching.
 
Re: The Plymouth/Dodge thing: Try explaining to a hard-core Chevy man that a GMC pickup is identical except for badges or vice-versa. I bought them interchangeably depending on who had the best deal for many years when I was a GM Man.

There are reasons there will NEVER be another GM product in my yard, but that's getting into touchy territory.
 
Re: Das Deutschers

First, Ich bin ein Deutscher, which explains a few things, but...

HUGE technology geeks, whether it's necessary or not. Their cars/engines/motorcycles are engineered to within an inch of disaster, are expensive and difficult to work on, are MARVELOUS when they work, and a nightmare when they don't.

This approach extends to software as well. The cannery I worked for bought into the SAP management software that computerized EVERYTHING! Of course there are advantages to tracking maintenance procedures, intervals, and parts inventory, but they just went nucking futz with it. Once I had a middlin' fair idea of how everything worked, it STILL took me 15-20 minutes to pull a fuse out of stock, log the repair, the manhours, the tech that did the work, reorder the part if needed, etc. etc. God forbid we should decide to change the manufacturer, model, hp, or electrical requirements of a motor on something...:yikes::wtf:
 
1983 BMW R100RS "Gretel" UPDATE
New OEM rotors cost upwards of $435 USD EACH - and there are three of these things on the big bimmer. To me in Canada that would be about $2000 CDN just for the frickin' brake rotors....Ach du lieber Augustine - those Germans sure are proud of their OEM parts - that is a whole lotta dough for three dumb lumps of stainless steel and a bit of lathe work!
:yikes:
And just like that, ThatXS650Guy decided he would never own a BMW...
 
Yeah....and Johnny Canuck for mine.
Dammit.

Hi Pete,
back when i was modestly wealthy (after I'd got an inheritance & before my bitch-ex left me) I had a financial advisor.
He said:-
The Canadian Government is very frugal so that only 50% of what they spend is totally wasted.
Income tax only brings in 30% of the money the Government spends.
Thus if I pay no income tax at all they are still 70% ahead, right?
 
Hi Pete,
back when i was modestly wealthy (after I'd got an inheritance & before my bitch-ex left me) I had a financial advisor.
He said:-
The Canadian Government is very frugal so that only 50% of what they spend is totally wasted.
Income tax only brings in 30% of the money the Government spends.
Thus if I pay no income tax at all they are still 70% ahead, right?

Actually Fred - I think that they have made some advancements on when you last received advice: they now waste as much as 70% of what they take in and give much of the rest of it to corporations to help fund their offshore tax havens.

But why quibble - its only our money.

Pete
 
Well sports fans, it is time for another chapter in the saga of Gretel - my 1983 BMW R100RS (cue the Wagnerian sturm und drang musik here). As the COVID19 sh!tstorm subsides, I am planning a couple of bike trips hither and yon and so I wanted to try to get a top box mounted on Gretel’s ample derrière in which to tote my stuff (chiefly rain gear etc.).

Several years ago, I found a top box off a Honda <I think> GL1200 Gold Wing at a bike wrecking yard for stupid-cheap money and so I bought it. Frankly, I’m not even sure that I knew why I bought it at the time, but it only cost about $25 and except for some slightly faded pinstriping, it looked solid and the nice chrome latches were secure, even though there were no keys for the locks. I may have had delusions of mounting it on my XS650, but I have since concluded that this scheme would not have been a good idea.
Honda_TopBox.jpeg

Then along came dear Gretel and so I thought, “hey, she is a big tourer, she has hard cases (the Krausers) and she’s black, plus she has such a cute little rear luggage rack - why don’t I bust out the ole’ engineering skills and see if I can mount this box on Gretel?

With a couple of possible trips looming this summer and fall, I got down to business. The BMW rear rack is sort of a dumb design as it is quite small and the forward of three cross-bars is not flat - so attaching anything to it is not easy. Anyhow, I fabbed-up a sheet metal reinforcing plate for the inside of the box, drilled some holes in suitable locations to suit the stock chrome Honda brackets and the box was secured to the seat rack - but it could still pivot forward and backward. Obviously, I needed some "pitch" axis support to prevent that pivoting action.

One of my former students is now an executive with a major automotive engineering consulting firm in Detroit and he suggested using 3D printed brackets to prevent rotation and he even offered to print them for me. So, we took some measurements and the next day he popped out two of the slickest looking brackets you’ve ever seen and holy cow, they work great and fit perfectly. He even incorporated four little hex-shaped recesses in the forward bracket to accept M6 nuts and bowed the upper surface on that same bracket to accommodate the curved recess in the forward-underside of the Honda top box.
Honda_TopBox - front mount_2.png
Honda_TopBox - rear mount.png

4D7273F1-6402-44DD-9C42-26A7604195BF.jpeg

You will note from the photo below that my inner steel reinforcing place has some hole-drilling errors. I could blame that on the fact that very few of the surfaces of the Honda box are flat and easy to measure (which is quite true) - but the fact is that I am not much of a machinist. It is too bad really, because Craig had powdercoated the plate - prior to the fitting being done.
Oh well.
7BBABFB1-C9FD-4DAF-8573-82370828C20C.jpeg

All I need to do now is touch up the black paint and white pinstripes and remove the Honda emblem and finally, install the 83mm BMW roundel that is on the way from evilBay onto the rear of the top box lid.

Pete
 

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One of my former students is now an executive with a major automotive engineering consulting firm in Detroit and he suggested using 3D printed brackets and he even offered to print the for me. So, we took some measurements and two days later, he pooped out two of the slickest looking brackets you’ve ever seen and hold cow, they work great and fit perfectly.

High tech brackets on a low tech tourer, I love it! Looks like a nice box you snagged there Pete. We wanna see it when it’s all mounted up, as well as some photos of your beautiful Beemer! ;)
 
Hi All:
I just did some edits to the top box install post above and included the CAD files for the two little 3D printed plastic brackets (see above).

Craig told me that the forward bracket (shown in the upper figure with the four holes and recesses for hex nuts) took about 25 minutes to draw with a low-cost CAD program and around 2.5 hours to print while the simpler, but thicker, rear bracket took less than 5 minutes to draw and under two hours to print.

The bodies of the two brackets are actually hollow - but the volume is about 20% filled with a web of reinforcement with extra around the screw holes in the forward bracket for stiffness. The hex recesses for the M6 mounting nuts are slightly undersized so that the nuts fit tightly and you can see that there are little "detents" on the main semi-circular cutout slots to help secure the brackets to the steel bars on the BMW rear rack. Subtle - but really nice little details and amazing technology for a few hundred bucks.

He made them at home with his 10-year old daughter's 3D printer (original cost was around $800 I think). Take that Bridgeport!

More to come: photos of the assembled box on the bike.

Pete
 
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