February 2007: The Bike Arrives

On a rainy, blustery February day, the BMW R69US arrived at Velocity Motorcycles in Richmond, Virginia. Donated by Cindy, a kind Walneck's customer in Arizona, it was shipped by JC Motors. As the rain fell, we (David Carmean and Eric Engler) and the rest of the Velocity crew jump up on the truck to examine our prize. We're anxious to get it down into the shop so we can see what we're dealing with. First the transport guys offload a pallet of stuff to get to the bike. Then I climb up to take a peek. The guys unstrap her and I make sure the bike is in neutral, then we wheel her onto the lift, lower away, and roll her into the shop.

"BMW," one of the transport guys says. "Or what's left of one," Eric adds a bit ominously. Eric pulls the horn to add a silly punctuation to the moment. I begin to crawl over the bike examining it in detail...I start rattling off a list of parts, and other issues we'll need to address...including the issue of an incorrect fork. Eric's going to work on getting a telescopic fork, and I'll be dealing with demo.

My first major observation is the trouble someone went through to put the side car on this bike. In fact this was the only U.S. model of that time that did not come with lugs to attach a side car. So, whoever did it had the lugs fabricated especially for the side car. Eric wants to make sure the engine and frame numbers match, so I look and we find they do indeed match. We don't want to do too much work on a bike that doesn't have matching numbers. If the numbers don't match, then the value of the bike goes way down. Eric grabs a handful of hay from the side car...and says, "Did you check all this, make sure it's legal?" Never know what you're gonna get Eric, south of the border.

We have the remnants of an unusual passenger seat that's been changed into some kind of rack. The air cleaner is incorrect. The horn is some little knock-off, not correct for the bike. Eric points out that the Earles fork is definitely a mistake....it seems to be the fork from a pre 1960 BMW. I think we should put the right U.S. front end back on. Keep it original.

The bags are nice, but Eric points out it will probably look better without them. I agree, the larger bags with the smaller gas tank over powers the rig. Probably lose the fairing, but one nice thing is the larger aluminum oil pan for extra capacity, and Eric notes the rare cross-over muffle piece, which is not correct. I also noticed they haven't changed the final drive ratio to pull the side car. It's an original 27/8, so we're going to have to make the judgment call about whether to keep the side car or not. This particular side car isn't very good quality, or in good condition. Eric thinks we should lose the side car, the bags, and get it back to its original look.

We're going to see if we can find a key to get into the gas tank. I don't think it came with the keys, and I'm interested in what's lurking behind the kneepad in the glove box. Maybe it's the original tool kit. Somebody's put a non-stock idiot light on the headlight bucket. I look at the window and note some of the stickers on the side car of the events the bike has seen. Eric continues to play with the horn, and decides definitely to go for the U.S. front end. We've got some leftover parts from a previous project, but we'll have to source some of the parts like the front fender and brackets. Missing a few fins on the right hand cylinder, will have to have that repaired, or get another one. If we can find a bad cylinder, we can rob the fins off of it and Bore Tech can replace the broken ones.

I don't think I've even checked to see if it's got any compression, so give it a few tries...doesn't feel too bad. Eric decides to make 2 different lists, one of parts we're definitely going to need, and another of things we're going to fix. We're going to try to get this done in 5 months. We'll talk to some of our vendors to see if they'll help us out from a financial point of view. Eric wants to find out how many people are feeling generous. Let's see what we can get done in the next couple weeks. We gotta get crackin'..got a lot of work ahead!