The Bike

April 2001

Well, I finally did it and bought another motorcycle....my first beemer....my life is complete.

What is it?  

It's a 1987 BMW R80RT.  It's basically a touring bike with a 800cc boxer motor producing about 50hp and comes complete with twin panniers, two glove box, a luggage rack and 103,000 miles on the clock.  Yep, it's been around the clock once already.

Purchase Cost?

£1000.  What a bargain I thought!  A BMW!  It'll go forever.  Great sounds emitting out of the exhaust; crackles and pops on the over-run; and buckets of oil on the ground after 5 minutes at rest.  Oh, wobbles at high speed.  A BMWobbleU.

Classic motoring at it's best.  What character.  What a beast.

Repair Cost?

£700.  Turns out the great sound coming out of the exhausts were due to the swiss cheese nature of the exhaust (completely rusted out), the over run burble due to poor tuning plus bad exhaust. And the oil leaks? Well, I asked the guy did he find the oil leak.  He replied "Which one?"  Every runner seal on the motor had rotted away. Oh, and the battery was shot as well.

Show me what this piece of motoring history looks like...

Well...something like this when new.

And something like this now...