This chapter of my life ramped up last fall with a trip to my girlfriend's dad's house last Thanksgiving. She grew up with a motorcycle father and was riding pretty much from birth. I rode in my 20's but hadn't in a long time after my love affair with BMW cars took hold and occupied my resources full time for the past 20 years. But back to my roadtrip home w/ my gf. To say her dad is a motorcycle guy is a bit of an understatement. Eventhough he raised four girls (by himself), they all rode. To give you an idea, this is in the middle of the driveway...
And with an overwhelming number of options, I spent the weekend on his 1000RR, GS, KTM dirt bikes and an RD350 i particularly fell in love with. I left wondering why i didn't have a bike and decided to remedy that. I'm a dyed in the wool BMW guy so anything else was unthinkable. After some reading the K75 seemed like a great option to help me discover what I wanted out of motorcycle. So the hunt was on and after a few months of research and casual looking I landed on a '91 K75 w/ just 14k on the clock.
It hadn't been ridin' much over the past 3-4yr but was super clean and from an honest dude. Honestly, it was set up nicely and well equipped to go places. The image above was without the included tragkorbs, but with those, the windshield, handlebars and seat back it was ready to hit the road, but I couldn't leave well enough alone. And while I love the look of the cafe racer, I realized that seemed like a silly thing to do to a K bike after spending a few weeks riding it. By definition, the cafe bikes are small displacement low slung bikes built to make short feverish runs. This is NOT that kinda bike. It does however seem made to tour and at some point I hope to do that. But for now, my vision: a poor man's RnineT.
But before I could start on the aesthetics, i had to make sure all the mechanicals were in good nick. I started with:
-oil/filter change
-air filter
-breather hose
-spark plugs
-final drive oil
-transmission oil
-fuel filter
-pulled the tranny-back and lubed all splines
-rebuilt the rear brake calliper and flushed font/rear brake fluid
at that point i felt comfortable enough to work on the aesthetics and make the bike "mine." so i started by shedding the seat back and windscreen and adding some bar end mirrors and an LED headlight to improve the vision a bit
the bar end mirrors didn't really work so i added some mirrors from an RnineT, added S bars and a new set of Michelins
and that's where it sits as of now. i'm just enjoying it how it is, but have lots more plans. It didn't take long to realize one bike wasn't going to be enough, so scooped up a 1975 R90/6 with just 22k
after a couple weeks of work both cosmetically and mechanically, this is where I'm at
While I feel a need to preserve the originality of the bike, I realize they made a ton of these, it's nothing special and my love for cafe bikes still lives. I may move in that direction with this one.
All that to say, I'm now a BMW motorcycle guy as much as I am a BMW car guy. While I've logged my first 1k miles with the K bike and only a fraction of that with the airhead, i can completely appreciate the engineering that went into both bikes and plan to preserve both of them to the best of my ability.
I also don't think it will stop there -- much more to come.
