Wasn’t expecting that Dai. What a bummer.

No bites, so tomorrow I start dismantling it. The wheels, fairing, handlebars, exhaust system etc. are being transferred to Low Flying Brick. LFB's RS bodywork will be cleaned up and sold as a complete batch, fully-loaded tank included. The RT fairing will get an LT electric screen (I have all the LT inner fairing parts as well as two screens) and all of LFB's funky lighting system. I also have another complete RT fairing, sidepanels and seat hump which was sanded back, cleaned and degreased ready for painting. I probably won't get much (if anything) for it. I also have a third, metallic black upper fairing which is almost perfect and will be for sale. The frame will probably end up with the gentleman in Harrowgate who appeared to have a de-cafe'd frame with a suspect butt weld in it.

The engine will just get kicked under the bench and used as a footrest for the next few years. I've spent approx £2K on this and if I'm lucky, I'll recover about £600.

I'll run a listing on here when it's down as far as it's gonna go. The bottom line is that I have a very small pension coming in for the next three years until I hit State age and I just can't afford to spend any more on this.

Disappointed? Somewhere on the decapitated side of gutted.

Sad.  I'm sure almost all of us has a similar experience somewhere in our past.  Mine was an Ossa Pioneer that never could finish a race.  It ended it's life by catching fire aided by a fiberglass fuel tank that melted adding it's contents to the conflagration.

I'm not sure I should resurrect this thread but there's an engine on its way... I never did get around to stripping Kostenlot for parts because I was so p*ssed off with it that I couldn't be bothered. The fairing parts and fuel tank all migrated to LFB - I can't ride with low bars (RS/naked) any more because it's just too painful (diagnosed with stage 1 arthritis in both wrists and thumbs - as a friend said, 'crash now, pay later'). This means that all the bronze fairing parts are going to have to migrate back to Kostenlot because once it's running, it's up for sale. I have enough Alaska/Titan Blue fairing parts to put on LFB with one exception; the main upper fairing. I do have a good black one which will do until the weather improves and I can spray the purple monstrosity that is still hanging on the garage wall.

As far as I can discover, BMW never did a K100RT/LT in Alaska Blue (TWB?). They seemed to switch to Titan Blue which has slightly less sparkly bits in it but otherwise is almost the same shade as Alaska Blue.

The engineer in me is actually looking forward to stripping Kostenlot's engine to find out where the damn crack is in the water jacket. So why did it run originally? Because I filled the radiator and then almost immediately fired it up. It didn't have time to leak coolant into no.1 cylinder. It seemed to take about two weeks to dump the coolant into the sump, so that would also explain why it fired up beautifully a day later when I balanced the throttle bodies.

Engine literally just arrived - thank you very, very much Paul (BAE). A new clutch plate, bolts and the radiator spigot o-ring are on their way from Motorworks (I already have the other seals I need). I'll get started on it later when the eldest boy next door gets home from school and I can grab him to help me lift it onto the bench.

The delivery company were Liam Connolly. The driver was brilliant - he ran the pallet right into my garage and next to the workbench.

Dai wrote:Engine literally just arrived - thank you very, very much Paul (BAE). A new clutch plate, bolts and the radiator spigot o-ring are on their way from Motorworks (I already have the other seals I need). I'll get started on it later when the eldest boy next door gets home from school and I can grab him to help me lift it onto the bench.

The delivery company were Liam Connolly. The driver was brilliant - he ran the pallet right into my garage and next to the workbench.

Dai,the best thing for ARTHRITIS IS TURMERIC CAPSULS used regular they relay do  work well  Kind Advise from Old Fart Person

Dai wrote:Engine literally just arrived - thank you very, very much Paul (BAE). A new clutch plate, bolts and the radiator spigot o-ring are on their way from Motorworks (I already have the other seals I need). I'll get started on it later when the eldest boy next door gets home from school and I can grab him to help me lift it onto the bench.

The delivery company were Liam Connolly. The driver was brilliant - he ran the pallet right into my garage and next to the workbench.

You’re very welcome Dai. 

Good stuff, glad it arrive safely. Hope all is ok with it and Kostenlot enjoys the heart transplant and lives to ride again.

moriarti wrote:

Dai,the best thing for ARTHRITIS IS TURMERIC CAPSULS used regular they relay do  work well  Kind Advise from Old Fart Person

I had tried them but no joy. Apparently they don't work for everyone and someone has to be in the 'screw you' group. At the moment I'm still with stage 1 ('mild') arthritis where my wrists can have off-days and spend all day (or all week as it has been recently) with a nagging pain best described as like a slight sprain. Stretching thumbs for the BMW OEM switches is just mildly painful most of the time but if I get it wrong, I really, really know about it; hence the reason I fitted LFB with Italian switches.

Born Again Eccentric wrote:You’re very welcome Dai. 

Good stuff, glad it arrive safely. Hope all is ok with it and Kostenlot enjoys the heart transplant and lives to ride again.

The wain next door wants to be a motor mechanic and has already signed up for a couple of courses at the local college. I'm going to show him how to deal with bucket-and-shim tappets in the morning.

Well, I showed Zack how to measure gaps and left him to it. He came back with a reasonable set of figures that showed just two shims needed replacing. I left him to calculate how big the replacement shims need to be. As it happens, one can be dropped into the other bucket leaving just one new shim needed. I dug through my bag of shims but of course I didn't have the one I needed (2.75mm). I also got the clutch carrier off - the o-ring had deteriorated so badly that it broke into three pieces when I tried to lever it out. The Hall effect seal and the rear crankcase seal popped out fairly easily, but I did leave a nasty scratch at the front of the HES seal housing. 

Bugger. 

The jury's still out on whether to change the timing chest cover or leave it. There's about one-third of the sealing area not affected by the scratch. Clumsy b*st*rd.

There was a good film of clean-ish oil on the camshafts and the cylinder head, so I have good hopes for the rest of the engine. I'm seriously considering popping the crank cover off just to be sure, to be sure.

So, after both procrastinating and being asked to write some software for an aircraft museum (just up the road from you, Olaf), we once again take a goooood long look at this four-years-in-the-brewing disaster area.

I gave Paul's ex-engine a really good looking at (and talking to while I was at it). Just two inlet shims needed replacing which was good news. Unfortunately for Paul a few bits of ally swarf had escaped and deposited itself in the inlet ports. I carefully closed each valve in turn and blew it out, then wiped a small piece of greased cloth around the ports to pick up any remaining dust. I did take a look down the barrels with a camera but saw nothing to worry me. Once it's reassembled I'll spin it over a few times with the plugs out. Just in case, you see . As the engine had been stood for so long, the inside had gathered a fine layer of dust in places (the D-gaskets were missing on the cam cover) but it was mostly in excellent condition. However I did have to evict a woodlouse that had taken up residence in the sump...

I worried a bit about the dust because I really didn't want to strip the whole engine just to clean a few parts and the word 'dust' can encompass bits big enough to clog the oilways. During an email exchange with Paul a small dim light began to glow; I emptied most of the contents of a large can of WD40 around the insides of the engine and left it overnight to drain into the crank cover. That definately did the job and brought down a lot of combustion products with it too.

As for the scratch in the HES seal area; as usual, it's never as bad when you get to look at it properly. It was less than half the seal height so I decided to forget about it. I did succeed in destroying the first new seal. When you look at the seating area it appears that the area surrounding it  is all the same height and is square. It isn't. When looking from the front, the part above the seal has a slope on it of a couple of degrees which is just enough to skew the seal on the way in. As Charlie would say: buggah.

One s/h clutch plate later from Motorworks and here we are:





While I was at it I put a water temp sensor in the oil/water pump, hence the two wires at the front.

May it power your K for many Ks to come!

Ahm selling the buggah when it's done! I'm out of room and I have two more bikes to build.

Looking good Dai

Good luck with the rest

So; what should have been just a one-month software project for the Foynes Flying Boat Museum stretched a further month building new hardware and modifying some of the existing hardware too. Interesting job, but it got in the way of this  

Paul's engine is now in the frame and the throttle bodies are back on. Very careful attention was paid to the two inner worm drives on the plenum chamber so they didn't interfere with the throttle quadrant. I had the usual wrestling match with the plenum chamber even after I'd softened the inlet rubbers with a hot air gun; eventually after some frustration I figured out the easy way to do it. Take a hefty screwdriver and use it as a lever between the frame and the plenum chamber - protect the frame with a piece of cloth. The plenum chamber slid back on with four quite satisfyingly loud pops. I refitted the vacuum chamber and the fuel injectors (they went in easily at least!), followed by the throttle and fast idle cables. I did have some second thoughts about refitting the vacuum chamber as I'm aiming on selling Kostenlot and wondered if it would be better to sell it as close to standard as possible. If anyone has a spare OEM clutch cable I'd quite seriously consider a swap.

Lastly I removed the Alaska Blue front mudguard because, as stated above, Kostenlot is going to be Bermuda Bronze so that LFB can retain its existing Alaska Blue colour scheme which I definately prefer.

Refitted engine with NOS radiator. An ebay find - IIRC someone had inherited a load of K100 parts and was getting rid of them. I doubt he had any idea what he had because I'm sure I only paid £40 for the radiator still in the original box.



As discussed above, I want LFB back in its Alaska Blue so I'm changing the bodywork as I go along. It's a bit of a harlequin at the moment.



Refurbished silencer. This was covered in tar spots and burnt oil - I started by washing it down with acetone but I may just as well have been using water. Next showed it to my polishing machine and tried a rough sisal mop using grey soap, but although that worked it was taking forever and getting into some of the welds was next to impossible. The charm was 1000 grit wet'n'dry polished on with Autosol. It lifted all of the crap without too much effort and left a dulled surface of very fine, almost invisible, scratches. Back to the polishing machine with a mid-sisal mop and black soap; this brought the surface up to a mid-shine very quickly. If I was going for a show polish the next step would have been green soap on mid-sisal but by this time I'd had enough. Holding that lump up to the polishing mop for minutes at a time started to get a bit wearing. I finished it up with Autosol on the bench. No, I didn't do the front cap; too fiddly to get in around the exhaust ports and they're going to get blackened again pretty quickly anyway.



When bolting the mounting bracket back on, tightening up the front bolt gave that horrible 'soft' feeling that indicates a thread is about to strip. I was pretty damn sure that I didn't have any M8 helicoils - but I did!! So five minutes later there was another helicoil to join the ones that Paul swears are holding the engine together.

Up in the roof I knew I had three heatshields. As I'm selling this bike as close to standard as possible I decided to refurbish one and mount it. The first one out of the roof (the one at the top) looked good until a bit of light where a bit of light shouldn't be caught my eye. At least two if the boltholes are worn so thin that the depression that holds the washer is about to fall out. Buggerit. Back up the ladder to get the other two. The middle one is LFB's original heatshield and it turned out to be too far gone with rust to recover. The silver one holds promise (apart from the big obvious hole at the top rear), but we shall see.

Off the top of your heads, anyone know what the size of the front anti-vibration rubber is on the heatshield?

After three months of ignoring Kostenlot, it's running. I finally ran out of things to do on the Enfield and on LFB (which is now all blue - I got an RT top fairing on ebay for £25 plus £37 (!!!!) shipping. Wasn't the seller taking the piss - he pointed me to the courier's website which, believe it or not, was cheaper than Parcel Force). At first Kostenlot gave a couple of soggy backfires which is usually indicative of having the fuel pipes on the wrong way round but no, not that. I had the plug leads for 3 and 4 on the wrong coils. Gah. Stoopid buggah. After that it was a bit reluctant to start, probably because two of the cylinders were flooded, but when it did eventually start it very quickly settled down to a very smooth fast idle.

That engine may have 90,000 miles on it Paul, but sure as hell it doesn't sound like it.

Tidy-up begins tomorrow. Apart from the exhaust heatshield, there's still a lot of nit-picking to do and one obvious problem to sort. The speedo is indicating 15mph when the engine is running.

I love a saga with a happy ending

Not until I put the last bloody screw in.

Dai wrote:
That engine may have 90,000 miles on it Paul, but sure as hell it doesn't sound like it.

Great news Dai. The engine was running smoothly last time I had it running…it was the sudden stop caused by the tin box driving into the side of me (and my ignorance, at the time, of how repairable these bikes are) that committed it to the dark recess of the garage. Really glad that I was able to contribute to your project. Looking forward to seeing the finished photos…

At this point it's pretty well finished, bar mounting the spanky new windscreen. I've lost the damn sleeve nuts (actually I haven't lost them - they're just hiding somewhere and laughing at me from whichever dark corner they've found). I checked Motorworks for a mounting kit and nearly sprayed tea over my monitor - £33.60 + P&P for eight M5 cup washers, eight M5 x 16mm countersunk screws, six M5 chimney nuts and two M5 x 12mm sleeve nuts. Sorry Motorworks - that's less than £3-worth of materials there at retail price. A fifteen minute trawl around ebay netted enough parts to mount two-and-a-half RT screens for just over £10. I could have bought just enough to mount one screen and reduced even that price, but you never know*

It's a bit of a reluctant starter compared to LFB but once it's running it doesn't hesitate. It may improve with time as things bed in. Maybe.

* 'never know' being LFB. Having spent all that time and effort overhauling and mounting an electric screen on LFB, I don't like it. Even in the fully lowered position the top of the screen cuts right across the middle of my eyeline. I have another RT screen lurking up in the garage roof, so... maybe.



Ah fkit. I just found the original two mounting kits in a bag marked 'RT mounting kits'. Wouldntyajustknowit.