Category Archives: Motorcycles

About BMW Airhead motorcycles.

Steve and Airheads

Motorcycles, Photographs

4 years on.

Steve died four years ago today and we will soon be enjoying the Aaron Sorkin biopic. starring the splendid Michael Fassbender, who happens to be a devoted biker himself. In fact, he does not even own a car.

Some six years ago I wrote of the visceral appeal of old motorcycles and my BMW R90/6, a 1975 model, remains in service today and I still enjoy the heck out of riding it. These older BMWs, air cooled with the horizontally opposed cylinders poking either side into the airstream are, appropriately enough, referred to as ‘Airheads’. BMW continues to stock almost every part for machines made since 1972, which is remarkable, as are the prices!

Few know that Steve was a BMW bike rider before migrating to Mercedes cars later on:

He’s riding a late ’60s R60/2 with the lovely Earles front forks named after the British inventor, Earnie Earles. The design, way ahead of its time, ensured that there was no dive under heavy braking while also providing the solidity needed for hauling a sidecar, a not uncommon form of transportation in a still poor, war torn Europe back then.

My R90/6 had been in storage for four years while I enjoyed a 1989 R100RT touring machine; that has now moved to a good home and I am returning to my first love. I have owned the R90/6, for over 25 years. I am the second, and likely last, owner.

Totally devoid of electronics, my beast nonetheless refused to start owing to an electrical problem. Electricity, as we all know, is the work of the devil. After locating the correct wiring diagram (there are several for 1975 – don’t ask) I printed it on no fewer than eight sheets of paper using Split Print so I could actually trace the wiring. Finally diagnosis pointed to a blown diode in the headlamp shell, a veritable linguine of wiring, and after replacement the God of Tesla spoke once more to the electrical systems.


Linguine – or is that spaghetti – wiring inside the headshell.

As befits Real Men, the machine has a kick starter which you can see me use in the video taken by my son, in addition to a more modern electric one. Refresh the page if it does not come up. This is the first time the bike has run in four years. Note especially my ancient Airheads T shirt. You can hear the massive clunks from the gearbox as I shift – early airheads were always thus, and at 60,000 miles the ‘box is as good as new:



The pause at the end of the driveway is to turn off the choke using the relatively inaccessible lever on the airbox.

Laying up any machine for so long a period of time is never good. Drain all the fluids and your seals dry out, only to leak once the fluids are replaced. Don’t drain them and water vapor enters and starts to rust parts out. I had taken the precaution of draining everything and was rewarded with two leaky petcocks supplying gasoline to the carburetors.

Then the clutch cable was disclosed to be on its last legs, frayed beyond belief. You can’t win.


It’s always something with old machines.

The new cable in place. Aaah!

Setting the points gap on this 19th century device is never fun and was always the cause of much Garage Language, until I chanced upon an elegant tool designed and machined by Paul Tavenier (Amazon carries the tool. But of course):


Paul’s supremely elegant points tool.

The tool is placed over the spigot once the advance mechanism is removed. There’s no need to set TDC – the tool emulates it, the collar separating the points to maximum opening. Push it on, adjust the points gap until the included 0.40mm feeler gauge is a sliding fit, and you are done. Bliss.

Airheads came with exceptionally complete tool kits and were sadly discontinued in 1995 in favor of modern marvels which need a PhD and a computer to fix. That and lots of money.


The Airhead toolkit, supplemented by Paul’s tool and spare points. The spare coiled spring in the center is one of two keeping the center stand up when raised.

There are few tasks you cannot complete with the above, aided in no small part by the exceptionally elegant and modular design of the machine.

Now one thing led to another and as is the wont of Airheads we chatted a bit about our machines. Paul happens to have been riding his R90/6 for 35 years now, making me a relative novice. Well, wouldn’t you know it, he is the same Paul Tavenier who was on the original Macintosh design team! Paul writes that Steve’s earlier R75/5 sat in the inner lobby of the Bandley 3 building at Apple for many years, on display as an example of what great design is all about.

Thank you, Paul. Airheads Rule.  And  Steve, you are much missed.

Photographic tributes? You will not find a finer one than mine.

Elitism

Cameras, Motorcycles

Guilty as charged!

I am an unashamed elitist, a status too often mistaken for snobbery. The two are unrelated. To misquote Wilde, the snob knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. The elitist, by contrast, focuses solely on value. Scratch an elitist and you will find an engineer.

I was struck by this realization when thinking of the choices I have made in machines over the years. Before we get to cameras, let’s look at some other daily possessions and the brands involved.

In the kitchen you simply cannot beat GE appliances. Not some fancy marque name, just your basic GE (and still made by GE as their disaster passing for a CEO failed to sell the home appliance division). Bog reliable, no instruction book needed and parts easily available when they do eventually break. But let’s face it, they rarely do. The GE fridge is the very touchstone of reliability.

With the mundane behind us, let’s focus on the essential. Motorcycles. For as long as I can remember I have ridden BMW motorcycles. Air cooled twins, water cooled flat threes and fours, oil cooled twins, faired, naked (the bike, not me), carburetted, injected, with or without sidecar, fast, slow, I loved them all, but only my first – a 1975 R90/6 air cooled boxer – remains, and is much loved. It had style where the others had function. Riding that old BMW reminds me that it’s the journey, not the destination, which matters.

In watches, I would love to tell you that I have always worn a Patek, but that would require that I had done a far better job of choosing my parents. Let’s face it, Polish refugees who had the poor sense to choose England over America as the land of the future – we are talking 1947 here – for their kids aren’t going to be troubling the Nobel Committee any time soon. Econ. 101 was plainly not on my parents’ curriculum. Add a curious predisposition for keeping their wealth in a Polish bank despite six – 1933-1939 – years’ warning that maybe moving the lot to Switzerland might make sense, their belief in the League of Nations and in the power and goodness of America saw them lose the lot to the invading hordes. So, to cut a long story short, I can claim to have worn nothing but a Patek since 1996. For nigh on twenty years, every time I was about to get one, the price had risen that bit faster than my disposable income. Well, it inspired me to try harder, I suppose.

I was a long time woodworker. Relaxing like nothing else, very challenging (metalwork is child’s play by comparison) and a perennial source of dissatisfaction. You can always do better. And I say ‘was’ because the onset of tendonitis – meaning my wrists hurt like hell when stressed – dictated disposal of my tools and conversion of the woodshop to a home theater. But I did keep one or two for the odd occasion and they all say Makita or Panasonic on the body. The Japanese make lovely, well adjusted and light tools which take an incredible beating and remain in perfect order. By contrast American tools – they used to be made here – try to impress with weight and the heck with the fit and finish. De Walt and Porter Cable have a lot to answer for when you look at just how shoddily the average American home is put together. As for the cheap and cheerful Chinese imports, whether from Taiwan or PRC, well you get a kit which has to be repaired and tuned before it works. Not a great use of valuable time.

Though I’m lousy at it, I do enjoy cooking and the pots and pans have always said All Clad. You can bury me with those. Good weapons too, in the event of a burglary. The chef’s knife is a Sabattier because if you want to cut well, use what the world’s most food obsessed nation swears by. Leave the guns to the Germans.

And speaking of Germans, when it comes to cars, few would disagree that the best cars made from 1975 through 1990 came from Stuttgart. Mercedes had the market cornered in execution, quality, longevity, resale value and safety, and Americans – me included – were happy to pay a premium for the three pointed star. Sure, the budding Andrettis swore by Porsche, the gold chain set by BMWs and techies by Audis, but Mercedes was the car for the rest of us. Masochists, by the way, opted for Jaguars. Then, two momentous events changed everything in 1990. The accountants took over Mercedes Benz and dictated that cars need only last two years. Greedy, over-leveraged Americans no longer bought cars, they leased them for two years then traded in for the latest variant. So, as leases were only 2 years long, no one cared if the knobs, dials and button failed on Day 731. It was someone else’s problem. The other event, which the dumb Germans made light of, was Toyota’s entry with a new luxury brand aimed directly at Mercedes. The Lexus LS400 introduce in 1990 cost 25% less than the top of the line Mercedes and outperformed it in every regard. My last Mercedes was the 560SEL, maybe their most glorious sedan creation and my first Lexus which I drive to this day is a 2000 LS400. MPG? How about 14 vs. 27 on the freeway. Horsepower? 238/290. Comfort? Identical. Noise? Lots/none. Repairs: Constant/none. So Lexus was this elitist’s choice.

Computers? Apple. If you have to ask, you just don’t get it.

Home electronics? It really doesn’t matter. Nearly everything made is dead reliable and dirt cheap – premium prices generally add never-used features. So brand no longer matters. No one buys a Sony because it’s a Sony any more, as Sony is finally learning. This is the Era of Price.

Furniture? Unless you are into antiques, see ‘Home electronics’ above. I despair at how good cheap imported furniture is (as do the last two remaining US manufacturers in North Carolina) and how much better than even my best woodworking efforts.

Long time readers will experience no surprises when it (finally!) comes to photography.

Cameras :

Ultra small: Then nothing, now Panasonic LX1
Small: Then – Leica M, now Panasonic G1
Medium: Then Rollei, now Canon 5D
Large: Then Crown Graphic 4×5, now fughedaboutit

Printers:

Then Epson, now HP – because it does big prints using dyes, which I love and they don’t fade like the old Epson’s dyes.

Tripods:

Then Gandolfi, now Linhof

Lenses:

Then Leica and Zeiss, now Canon (how I wish Leica would fully automate their wides in a Canon DSLR mount!)

Studio light: Then Novatron, now Novatron (proudly and very well made in Dallas, Texas – at least mine was)

So, there you have one elitist’s choices. Notice how the photographic ones need no explaining, telling their own story. It’s when you get to kitchen tools that you are forced to expound at length, it seems.

The visceral

Motorcycles, Photography

Of bikes and cameras.

It’s easy to wax poetic about the mechanical age and the great machines which were created back when. And while it’s true that the pleasure of operating a wholly mechanical device vastly outweighs modern all electronic creations, it’s not all sweetness and light.

The main problem is that machines of that age were not especially reliable when new and time has hardly been an ally. So the feel when reverting to the use of something old is akin to that of the Windows user who has that palpable sense of fear every time he turns the power on. “Will it start?”

Defenders of the mechanical age will praise its machines not just because of their charisma but will invariably go on to add how all the parts are still available and how these things can be fixed ad infinitum. What they omit to mention, of course, is that the products of the electronic age which we live in hardly ever need fixing and are so inexpensive to replace that fixing makes no economic sense.

I was the happy user of Leica M2 and M3 cameras for some 35 years and they were a delight to use. Sure, each had its quirks and sometimes they just did not like to be rushed, but they were beautiful to behold and wonderful to use. They were visceral. You got tactile and aural feedback. Heck, you even got olfactory feedback if you fried the thing in the sun. But do I need to mention the constant round of repairs, realignments and lubrication services? Still, this was the very best there was so you smiled and put up with it.

While the Leicas have moved on, usurped by a Canon 5D, there is little comparison. The 5D is superior in every respect, from its drop dead awesome sensor to its auto everything options and vast ability to tailor settings if you so please. It never breaks, can bang away all day, the plastic and magnesium body shell is far less prone to damage and …. the thing has all the charm and efficiency of a refrigerator.

Motorcycles are like that. There has never been a time in my life that two-wheeled powered transport did not fascinate me and the one motorcycle I have ridden throughout these past twenty years of ownership is my BMW Boxer twin.


My 1975 BMW R90/6. A product very much of the mechanical age.

It has many comparisons to a Leica M. It needs frequent maintenance. Things go wrong – nothing major that would leave you stranded but still these things have to be attended to. It wears out its spark plugs. The carburetors are 1920 technology. The air-cooled, horizontally opposed motor, which does so much to contribute to a smooth ride and a very low center of gravity, was conceived by BMW in WWI for aircraft use. To this day, the blue and white roundel, designating a spinning propeller against an azure sky, is used on all the factory’s products. When mine was crafted in the old Berlin factory (by German mechanics, not Turkish gastarbeiter) its pinstripes were applied by the ladies in the finishing shop, by hand. The early use of alloys throughout the machine makes for a fully fueled weight with luggage of under 550 lbs – half that of your neighborhood Harley. And while I putter off in near silence, the pig on the Hog will have woken all and sundry with his foul, polluting noise. He needs the enormous engine just to haul his beer belly around.

Yet, for all its quirks, I have kept the BMW whereas the Leicas moved on three years ago. The reason is simple. I have ridden the latest machines and owned a couple. Like the 5D they are insanely competent and reliable as a refrigerator. Fast beyond anyone’s need for speed. Brakes to die for (or not, in this case). But, whereas I expect that sort of boring reliability in my camera, it’s hell on earth when riding. The modern machines simply do not speak to me and when I’m riding, that’s a conversation I desire to have. It completes the plot comprised of wind, weather, scent, touch, feel and smell and that, I suppose, is why I ride.

One of the few remaining modes of transportation where the journey truly is greater than the destination. Yes, the chances I may die are far greater than sitting in my airbaggedoutofsight car but only one of those two passengers will have enjoyed the final journey.