A better mousetrap.

Multi-purpose tools are generally useless. The perfect example is the Swiss Army knife which some bozo, who has never turned a nut or bolt with intent, gave you for Christmas.

Jack of all trades, master of none.

Of the dozen tools on mine only one is of use, the magnifying glass, and even that cannot be deployed without breaking a nail. I use the rounded end of a paper clip. I keep it because my long deceased mum gave it to me, thinking she was doing me a favor.

But the Swiss thing is, after all, a toy. A serious mechanic will never use his and keeping this whopper in your pants will invite Mae West’s greeting wondering whether that is a gun in your pocket or are you just happy to see her?

Now let’s look at the four most useless tools that just about every mechanic has in his tool chest.

First there’s the Crescent wrench which all and sundry brought up in England know as the Bodger Wrench:

English motorcycle mechanics only.

You try and adjust this horror to grip the hex head of your choice, find the jaws parting and the air gets blue with the ensuing garage language as you round the corners on the hex. So why do I have so many, you ask? Because I too was once young, foolish and ill educated. Now they reside on my peg board for decoration and as reminder that there’s one born every minute.

Moving on, we have Channellock pliers:

Lock, my rear.

These specialize in brutalizing your fastener, insist on slipping, require near Schwarzenggerian feats of strength to use and, into the bargain, do a nice job of rusting out after a while. The patina may give you that warm glow of prizing a well used tool, but there’s nothing to prize or use here.

Aaah! you emote. But there’s always that handy standby, the pair of pliers.

Useless.

Uh huh. And shame on BMW for including this in the Airhead toolkit. The jaws are never parallel, meaning whatever they grip will be trashed, you can apply no effective leverage to the short handles and the cutter simply does not cut it. Useless for either gripping or parallel squeezing.

Finally we have the ultimate vice, the Vise Grip:

Don’t get hurt.

This device has probably been the cause of more garage injuries than any other. It will fail when you need it most, your busted knuckles testimony to its gripping power. No more need be said.

The solution to all of the above comes, unsurprisingly, from Germany, or West Germany as I remember it, which is where my BMW R90/6 motorcycle originated in 1975. (Except for Walter Kaaden’s magnificent two stroke MZ racing motorcycles, I struggle to think of anything good that came from East Germany). The machine came with one of the very best toolkits ever included with a motorcycle, and once I discarded the pliers it looks like this:

The best ‘on the road’ toolkit in the business. The $2 tire pressure gauge
beats anything with a battery for size and price, and is just as accurate.

The red handled beauty at the left is a Knipex (pr: ‘Kinniepex’) pliers wrench, and it looks like this:

The best wrench in the business.

This costly alternative to the above four shockers is actually cheaper than the aggregate outlay on the garbage tools. The jaws are always parallel, ensuring a proper grip on the flats of the hex. The jaws are smooth, meaning no marring. The cam system results in a tightening of the jaws as you apply torque to the tool and they are perfect for parallel squeezing of two surfaces to reduce their separation.

I bought the 175mm (7+ inches) as it fits nicely in my on board tool kit and allows me to easily apply a massive 85 ft.lbs. of torque to any fastener in sight. There is a metric size indicator in the window, thus ….

The size indicator.

…. but if you watch the video in this link you will see how to use the tool without having to guess the size of your fastener. You want to emulate the ratcheting action of a ratchet handle? Yup, it’s there. Check the video.

Will I chuck out the horrors introducing this piece? No. They serve as reminders of errors past. But the Knipex is my ‘go to’ upgrade for all of those. And the heirloom quality means your son will enjoy the tool as much as you did. Does the Knipex obsolete those nice six sided sockets and ratchets and German (Stahlwille) or French (Facom) wrenches in your garage? Of course not. But it’s just the thing for on-the-road-repairs.

Design for design’s sake.

The BMW GS line (GS is German for what we now call ‘dual purpose’) is not only one of the most famous and long-lived motorcycle designs, it also saved BMW from abandoning motorcycle manufacture when introduced in 1980. The idea was to craft a bike as capable on tarmac as it was on an unpaved forest road and the line continues to this day with aggregate production exceeding half a million. That’s a lot for a bike.

My 1992 R100GSPD. Awful aftermarket Parabellum windshield fitted.
The ‘Bumblebee’ color scheme is the one you want.

And the idea took off. It was something new after a long run of high quality but largely identical motorcycles from BMW, more known for their use by police forces worldwide than for exciting exploits off road. BMW pushed the idea by entering one in the Paris-Dakar rally which it handily won and the GSPD variant was born, with a gargantuan 9.25 gallon plastic gas tank. The airhead motor – meaning the trusty, horizontally opposed, air cooled twin – had grown to 1000ccs from the original’s 800, and was putting out a decent 60 horses or so, more than adequate for anything encountered in the real world.

So knowing that I needed a summer project in the furnace-like heat of southern Arizona, and also knowing that my garage would be air conditioned and the very lap of wrenching luxury before the heat arrived, I snapped up a lightly used GSPD from a fellow member of the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America. A decent lot, generally of trustworthy mien. The owner of many years was giving up riding at age 82 and was happy to pass it down to this sprightly 69 year old piker, along with more accessories and spares than you could shake a stick at. Thank you, Chuck in San Diego. I would tell you the cost but it’s not nice seeing grown men (or even women) weep, but when all the extras are disposed of it was pretty close to free. Such is luck. I’ll probably sell it in a year or so. I prefer the older machines.

The immediate and obvious things that had to be done was to send off the speedometer/odometer to Rick Borth at Overseas Speedometer to have the mileage adjusted to the correct 40.9k. BMW hit a bad spell in the ’90s with failing odometers and the certificate of speedometer change which came with the bike testified to its having been replaced with a new instrument in 1994, meaning that the reading on the replacement instrument was wrong, a fact calculated to drive any rational rider up the wall. Rick reset the mileage to the correct reading and generally looked the instrument over, fixing anything else which ailed it. Not least of the adjustments made was to correct the under-reading of speed, a common failing of that era’s Airheads. The speedometer was reading 15% low. Now it’s correct, calibrated using a known speed trap in Scottsdale which keeps the police in doughnuts.

Second, the bike came with both Jesse metal panniers and stock BMW plastic ones. The Jesses are just the ticket if you want to ride across some hell hole like Kazakhstan, though quite why any sane person would want to do that defeats me. They are also known to be nuclear war proof. Suffice it to say that they were in mint condition and after removal and replacement with the stock bags – shown above – the Jesses are for sale for a very tidy sum, for they are no longer available from the manufacturer, and very rarely to be found in any condition, let alone mint.

Third, the shockingly bad aftermarket Parabellum windshield had to go, especially as the bike also came with the factory original, twice as robust and thrice as competent. The Parabellum is so poorly engineered that no matter how you adjust it, you can be sure that the sides will strike the tank as the handlebars are canted over. The maker even admits to this on its web site. Hullo! And it was when refitting the stock shield that I realized just how much thought had gone into the design of the mounting hardware.

With the stock windshield. Odometer recalibrated.

I had removed the fairing sides when installing LED warning lights and gauge lighting, so the first step was to install the sides using the stock compound bolts which are center drilled and tapped for attachment of the windshield. Needless to say these are of unequal length, the longer of each pair going in the top attachment point. Now BMW had decided that the tilt of the stock shield should be easily adjusted, so they came up with a pivot hole and slot opening design, seen here:

The pivoting mechanism for the stock windshield.

So what, you ask? A couple of Allen bolts and spacers, no big deal. Wrong! The spacers, both inner and outer, are canted to adjust to the angle of the windshield. They also differ, the lower having a small spigot to allow the outer spacer to engage just so in the correct orientation, with the inner female threaded spacer having a square surround to properly align with the outer part, also being canted. The upper is also complex, this time with a wider spigot and castings on both the inner and outer parts and when you install the whole thing correctly you can adjust the angle of the windshield – clickety-click – by loosening both Allen bolts and having at it. Fear not, the interlocking mechanisms will see to it that nothing falls apart or becomes misaligned. So there you have great design, if insanely complex. And some smart German engineer poured his heart into the math and production dictates of these seemingly innocuous parts so that they would work just so and continue to function properly for 100,000 miles or more. And that, I suppose, is why my motorcycle of choice is the BMW Airhead.

Other fixes? You can see the alloy puck. the previous owner had attached to the foot of the sidestand in the first image, above. This reduces the lean angle with the machine on the sidestand where the heavy, large fuel tank makes the bike want to tip over. Sadly, as with all Airheads since the mid-1980s, BMW makes it extremely difficult to deploy the sidestand from the saddle as it cannot be seen. So I removed the puck, drilled a transverse hole and epoxied a steel rod in the hole as an extension for the left foot, thus:

Puck deployment extension – the whole thing painted a jolly yellow to match the color scheme.

There’s lots left to do. As with all Airheads drive to the rear hub is by shaft, no chains here, and the dual universal joints fitted to the shaft – dictated by the anti-torque design of the rear suspension – are known weak points, frequently failing without warning at 40,000 miles. My machine is at 40,900 …. Removal and inspection is no big deal and the aftermarket Airhead community is so robust that much improved designs with proper Zerk grease fitting can be had for peace of mind – and piece of wallet. Then there’s the panoply of odds and sods to be attended to which is normal for a bike of this age, but nothing to lose sleep over.

And I will be doing that work here:

Inside the air conditioned garage. It’s a toasty 100F outside.