Not a BMW guy but just got this...

Melnic

XS650 Junkie
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2000 BMW R1100RT (Touring)

When I got back into riding after a LONG pause I knew I liked the old bikes and cruisers. I purchased and sold a few bikes and recently saw something that looked like a "great deal" and could not resist. Threw my 2nd XJ650 I got recently up for sale, found a local buyer quickly and then picked this up the same day for not much more than I sold the XJ650.

I will not say I'm a "beamer guy" but I could not help but want to experience it. My riding buddy has an R1200ST. This was priced so low that I could not resist and I'll do the work on it myself so it will be the first Fuel Injected engine I will be working on since I worked on my 77 Datsun 260Z back in the late 80's (when I say worked on it, I really did not do much). Seller was a Harley guy experimenting and I got it for $2K. It was in front of his house and he did not have it listed online anywhere and just wanted it out of his garage. I has about 42K miles on it. Perfect tires
and everything seemed to be working. It has some scratches and scars on it. The windsheild was clouded from UV fade and I already polished it up enough to make it tolerable till I get more time to do it well. All he said he did in 3 years was put 1000 miles on it, oil change and new Battery. I'll take the oil change with a grain of salt and put that on my list of things to do in the near future.

One thing that may be of interest around here is the bags were faded on the inside section of the plastic. I saw a youtube video of a guy using a heat gun so I started on the bottom to test this out and it seemed to work. There are some little tricks I learned experimenting so I got it hot enough but not too hot to melt and still overlap to not stripe the darkening. I did one bag (the right) only. I also wanted to try the liquid restorer stuff so that's coming today. I'll see which lasts longer but this bike will be garage kept. below are before and after pics of the heat gun with the right bag. I'll post pics again when I do the liquid on the left one.

some things on my list for this include Oil change and Valve gap adjustment. On this bike you gotta take at lest one side of the fairing off. I may either put in new injectors or pull these off to clean them. Always wanted to do that for my boat outboards but my mobile mechanic for the boat is so cheap ($100 for Twins) when doing other service I never wanted to spend the time on it.


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Had 82' Rt100.... with the snowflake mag wheels... bags, faring, toons... it was only happy going from point A to point B with lots of asphalt in between.... at speeds north of the posted speed limit... wasn't a around town bike..or even the wave at the farmer back road bike. Had a 82' Cb900 Honda... factory touring package..... toons... it was a better machine. I sold the Honda and got the BMW.... middle of Ohio the BMW lost it's ignitor unit... I'm on the second floor of the motel while on the phone try'n to locate BMW dealer... (150 miles away)..... and outside the window I'm looking at a Honda dealership.... Aaaargh ^%$^*&)(* :mad:
 
Took the bike out on a short near 100 mile ride Sunday with my main riding buddy who has a 76 R75 and 2004 R1150RS. We have been wanting to take the old bikes out (his R75 and my XS650) but since I had not taken the BMW more than 10 miles, we took the R1100/R1150. This was first trip w/ our paired headsets so we were talking the whole time to the point I forgot I was on a new bike and even forgot to swap bikes half way. At the end of the ride, I took my Indian Scout which has a full fairing and windshield and the BMW was noticeably more comfortable except my legs I could not stretch out. The BMW has "elf pegs" on the cyl heads but the right one was still broken at the time.

I then finished the day before family was over for evening Easter by taking out the XS650 for a 45 minute ride down back roads which is how I like to ride the XS.

Rain this week so did some wrenching.
The 2000 BMW R1100RT had no service history with it. Brake lines are upgraded to Stainless. So this week I changed all the fluids (Oil, filters, Gear, Drive), New plugs, New rear brake pads. The rear brake fluid looked brand new which puzzled me as the rear brake pads were down to less than 1mm on one of the pads and 1.5mm on the other. The bike had elf pegs on the valve covers and the right one was snapped off so I did order and installed a new one on the right when I was changing plugs. Also installed a cheap solution for cruise control that puts a nut to add friction to the throttle on the bar end weight. I also 3D printed a wrist thingie that I find really helps with hand strain.

There are some other things I need to do to it like the Kick stand extension is broken off so I will bend a new piece from a rod and have friend weld it on. The little block on the back of the peg covers on the left side is broken off (this bike has been dropped a number of times) and I will have to MacGyver a fix to that.

This bike has the hidden gem of a few things that kill it on the road (Spline wear, Hall Effect Sensor wiring). I got it too cheap to sink a bunch of $ into it on having a BMW mechanic work on it so I'm just going to ride it till it fails and deal with it then. It won't be my daily after work ride so I'll reserve it for the longer trips to conserve it. I would say that of all the bikes I have, this is the most comfortable bike on the highway by far. Now that I have both Elf Pegs operating, it will be even more comfortable.

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Cool, those are a great ride.
For sure pull the front cover, check the alternator belt.
An 1150 just like yours, was farkled to death.
Fun except yeah no place to put long legs. These lowered floor boards help.
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Cheap because it had "bad pickups" but it was just shredded alternator belt had messed things up. Cleaned up and brmm brmm Don't member 4sher but this one had over 100K miles?
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REALLY know how to do the alternator tensioners, they are fragile.
cracked muffler exit is common on those.
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Was able to grind out the old make a sleeve and mig weld it in, worked great as long as I had it.
Get some more pics from your rides and post them!
 
gggary, I forgot to reply to your post months ago.
I also have the cracked pipe at the muffler.
I rivited on a closet bar flange to hold it. I did JB weld (hi temp) a pipe in there but that keeps falling out the Hi Temp JB weld is not holding.
Looks great when it was installed though :p
I will have to look at a replacement used or see if I can get someone to pull it apart and repair or just weld the pipe in.

This bike is good in the cold unlike my other bikes. Plus I can go 80+ and still be comfortable and stable.
This weekend, however, had a Final Drive leak just shortly after turning on the back leg of a 300 mile saturday. Lots of standing water to pass through. We stopped 3 times on the way back just to check the fluid level. I even topped off 40miles from the house. Seemed to be holding when bike was upright but not on the side stand and took the back end apart to see this. Below.
It sounded aweful as I hit the exit 5 miles from my house.

I was looking at your pics, those are not Elf Pegs on the spark covers? You can see my feet on my elf pegs as I'm riding through the standing water.

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I put another 500 miles on the bike in 1 day trip and a few short rides and bearings were fine. Bike was running good. BUT...

Well, now I'm really not a BMW guy. I sold the bike for what I paid for it. The parts and sweat and tears I put into it however were well worth it to know I want to keep a sport touring bike in my stables. Sold it on Fakebook to a lad from Kenya who had a 96 BMW 1100RS that had 100K miles on it and a "rattle in the engine" . The guy even bought my 83 XJ650. I needed to sell those to bring 2 more different bikes on my wish list into the garage. The XJ was running smooth and problem free since I revived it winter 2 years ago. I wish I had the room to keep that one though. The XS650 STAYS! as its a more classic bike and it looks so much nicer than the '83 XJ did. I have my eyes on a Yamaha FJR right now, hope to close one out in the next couple of weeks while the winter prices on used bikes are still low.


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:twocents: Yamaha announced end of the FJR and tenere.
the 3 cyl 900 is their "going forward" platform.
Honda is pushing the 1100 270 twins. DCT in it's latest versions is sweet. NT1100 coming to us this year.
The big 13 is just too big for the typical use case.
If a big ST machine is for you yes the yamaha is prolly best of that genre. Yamaha calling quits on the feejer will have a bunch of latest greatest riders dumping them....
 
Yea, Seems like BMW is the only one really keeping the sport touring alive. The whole "adventure bike" craze seems to split the market. I'm 5'8" and those things are just too tall for me. Buddy has an ST1100 and I did spend time looking at the ST1300. I was just headed at the Yamaha cause all the reading I've done, they are the most reliable of the bunch. I"m focused in on a couple 2007 to 2012 Gen 2 FJRs. Trying to get something Sub 10K so I can put some miles on them before having to do the valves.
:twocents: Yamaha announced end of the FJR and tenere.
the 3 cyl 900 is their "going forward" platform.
Honda is pushing the 1100 270 twins. DCT in it's latest versions is sweet. NT1100 coming to us this year.
The big 13 is just too big for the typical use case.
If a big ST machine is for you yes the yamaha is prolly best of that genre. Yamaha calling quits on the feejer will have a bunch of latest greatest riders dumping them....
 
Well, now I'm really not a BMW guy. I sold the bike for what I paid for it.

Ahhh….the end of an era. Have you ever considered an old airhead, like your friend has? Great bikes, easy to work on and very classic looking. If you can find one that hasn’t been butchered by some wanna be hipster! 😡

Honda is pushing the 1100 270 twins.

Knowing Honda I’m sure it’s a great motor. If only they could make it less fugly. 😁
ugly seinfeld GIF
 
Ahhh….the end of an era. Have you ever considered an old airhead, like your friend has? Great bikes, easy to work on and very classic looking. If you can find one that hasn’t been butchered by some wanna be hipster! 😡



Knowing Honda I’m sure it’s a great motor. If only they could make it less fugly. 😁
ugly seinfeld GIF

We bike swap sometimes and I ride his airhead so I get the best of both worlds :)
I saw an old airhead turned cafe racer at the Tatoo place by the Subway I frequent a few months ago.
he did a good job on it.

I'm taking a pause from acquiring another restoration project. I need to partial retire in about 1-2 more years before I start up again and have more time.
I do still have some more things I want to do on the XS this winter like recovering the seat.
 
Ahhh….the end of an era. Have you ever considered an old airhead, like your friend has? Great bikes, easy to work on and very classic looking. If you can find one that hasn’t been butchered by some wanna be hipster! 😡



Knowing Honda I’m sure it’s a great motor. If only they could make it less fugly. 😁
ugly seinfeld GIF
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????
Better in Blue?
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550 lbs all up svelte for a touring class bike.
 
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Yea, Seems like BMW is the only one really keeping the sport touring alive. The whole "adventure bike" craze seems to split the market. I'm 5'8" and those things are just too tall for me. Buddy has an ST1100 and I did spend time looking at the ST1300. I was just headed at the Yamaha cause all the reading I've done, they are the most reliable of the bunch. I"m focused in on a couple 2007 to 2012 Gen 2 FJRs. Trying to get something Sub 10K so I can put some miles on them before having to do the valves.
2012ish FJR got cruise control. If you don't need that you can prolly find a nice well farkled touring class bike in the 3 to 4K range.
There's guys that have lowered "adventure" bikes. They're out there on the used market.
 
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Just put the lower Euro bars on the R bike and it will be more "sporty" and more comfortable. Here's my /5, I've had it for a good 20 years .....

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..... and how it looks today .....

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And this is the 1st /5 I had, the one that "started it all" for me back in the late '70s. It turned me on to the Euro bar bend and the Krauser bags, both of which I still use and put on pretty much all my bikes to this day .....

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Can't go wrong with the FJR. 2013 was first year for cruise. I would look for a 13,14 or 15 which still has the 5 speed trans. Dont need the 6 speed.

FJR may not be dead, they have announced it for Canada and the USA has been last for the announcement for the last few years.

I love my 2013 FJR and have 70,000 on it now.
 
I rolled my 99 BMW R1100R out of the garage and rolled a '07 Tiger 1050 in. Jumped 2 era's of development. 10hp on paper, 25-30 real world. It's a badass motorcycle. Speed triple with all day egos. A triple before triples became cool again. Just add rear shock, front springs.
Check out the Tigers! $3-4000.

No splines, rear drive bearings, ign. pickups, and crumbling wiring insulation to worry about. I did like the front bmw suspension though. Fun at the dragon.
 

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