92 K75 Rt right side cover.

[jiggseob]

My new to me K75 RT is missing the right side cover.  Ordered one on e-bay, pay-pal-ed 180+ canadian pesos to a (supposedly) German seller, now four months later nothing, no tracking number no parcel no nothing, past the return period, sol wtf.

So I got busy with some 12 ga sheet steel and made a side panel.  The left panel is the stock panel, the right one is the one I made.  The biggest tell is the black gloss paint with clearcoat instead of the BMW 670 Classic Black Metallic.

Yes, it looks kinda bush-hack, but WAY WAY mucha betta than my $180 ebay side panel.  And when I get the right paint it will look alot better.

Looked far and wide for a set of RT-P (police) crash bars, none to be found so I made bars left and right to protect those fairing lowers that seem to be molded from eggshells.

[Laitch]

That looks plenty good enough! How about posting a photo of the inside showing how the hanger is anchored, and some of the crash bars you fabricated?

[jiggseob]

This is a pic of the grommet popper, that pops into the grommet in the hole in the frame web to put the side cover on.
For starters, I thought of forming a popper from metal, and fastening that on with epoxy, but the amount of surface available with just the "shank" of the popper, so my solution was to make the shank longer, and cut it into legs like a spider, and epoxy that on.
I started with a piece of 1/2" grade 5 bolt, the smooth shank part.  I do not possess a lathe - wish I did - so my haywire alternative is to chuck in a drill what I want to "turn" and hold that against the spinning grinding wheel of the bench grinder.  In this case, I was able to turn down that piece of 1/2" round stock into a perfectly shaped grommet popper on the end of a 2" piece of round steel.
Then I cut the round-stock end longitudinally into three "legs" and bent those to the profile of the uneven back surface of my side cover.  Then epoxied that together, and it holds.  Also shown is the flea-bay epoxy stuff.

[jiggseob]

Crash bars were a challenge to fabricate.  Especially the top mounts.  On a K75 RT, the only available place to mount upper crash bar is to the upper front engine mount bolt that holds the engine to the frame.  On an RT, that is through the gill openings in the lower fairing panels.  The available "hole" in the gill does not line up with the bolt either, so it is necessary for the crash bar to be offset an inch from the mount bolt.
I chose to fabricate from steel a mount that bolts to the engine mount, and also fastens to the round frame tube with an 8mm u-bolt.  So that mount, rather than putting all the load under the head of the engine mount bolt also spreads that load to the frame tube.
The bottom of the crash bar structure fastens to the oil pan.  There are 4 x 8mm bolts in the corners of the oil pan, about 30mm deep and into what looks like some substantial casting.  On an RT, those holes are not occupied and plugged with plastic plugs.  I fabricated a u-shaped frame to bolt to those 4 points, at the front of the engine is a 1x2 piece of rectangular tubing across the lower front, and a couple pieces of 1" square tubing off the sides of the U about 6" to the rear.  The ends of the tubing have 1/2" nuts welded inside, and provide the mounts for the real "bars".  The bars themselves are 1-3/4 w x 1/4 thick flat aluminum bars.    Cold bendable with a vise and hammer and press, and quite strong and light.  The angled bar is parallel with the angled line of the rear edge of the fairing lower.   Those bars form a triangle from the base u-frame, so I think that will be stronger than just a bar supported on two ends.
More pictures coming when I get it off the lift and outside in the real light.

[Past-my-Prime]

Very nice!
One advantage of the OE lower protection bars is that they’re attached via rubber flexible mounts that will peel off in a moderate crash, failing to protect the fairing but also not damaging the engine where they attach to.
You can do without the fairing. Or repair the cracked fibreglass. But if you rip a bolt out of the engine block, you might be stuck.

[jiggseob]

I'm hoping that the lower steel u-frame, bolted in four places, will tend to bend and fail, rather than rip four bolts out of the engine casting.  That is the art of building a sacrificial protection structure; progressive failure of least expensive non-run-critical parts first.

I did remove the lower fairing panels, which also results in removal of the radiator cowl.  Changes the look of the bike in an ugly (to me) way.  Beauty - or lack thereof - in the eye of the beholder.  There are people who like the naked-bike look; not me.

I might find that as I run this, some part of my structure will vibrate and sing like a tuning fork...  thats part of the game of fabrication, when something doesn't work out, you get the zip-disc and welder and get at it.  I have made quite a bit of scrap in my fabricating adventures...  does that make me an "innovator"?  Or just a fool?

[jiggseob]

An outdoors photo of the K75RT, a bit better view of the left side of my fabricated crash bar setup.