R E S U SCITATI O N
Beach, Wellington. This man has forgotten more
about BMWs than most will ever know.
Wellington is a long way from where I live – and
a huge round trip on a bike which isn’t running so
sweetly. But… the BMW Owners Club was having
their annual rally the following weekend, so a plan
was hatched to ride to Two Cats, have the bike
serviced and then carry on south to join the club’s
rally in Blenheim. We’d be kitting two cats with
one stone as it were.
Loaded up with a week’s worth of gear, as well as
camping gear for the rally, The Baron and I struck
out for Wellington mid-morning. A week before
the trip I’d had the worn out tyres replaced with a
Mitas E07+ rear and E09 front, which I’ll review in a
coming issue.
Some six, or so, hours later we rolled into Raumati
Beach and I was really quite glad to be climbing
off the bike…
A few days earlier Mick had quizzed me about
anything I thought needed doing. The schedule
for a single day was certainly an ambitious one;
valve clearances, engine/gearbox oil change, carb
O R D E R
balance, a possible service/rebuild of the ignition
timing unit and replacement of the rear shock
bearings, plus anything else that got picked up
along the way.
Going around the bike, Mick inspected
everything to see if there was anything else that
needed doing. One of the things picked up was
an oil weep from the gearbox output shaft. It’s
something that needs doing but I’ll have to head
down again to do that.
Draining the engine oil was first on the menu. Yep,
it was pretty black and it was clearly well overdue.
Gearbox oil was dropped out next. While there
was some swarf on the magnetic drain plug, Mick
felt it was acceptable for the age of the bike and
when the oil would have last been changed. While
that was all draining Mick noticed the gearshift
shaft was weeping a little oil, so popped a new one
in before it could get any worse.
Next up were the valve clearances. Popping the
rocker covers off, Mick set about measuring and
adjusting the clearances, which should be 4/1000-
inch for the inlet valves and 8/1000-inch for the
exhaust. None of the clearances were out range
but they weren’t exactly where they should be.
KIWI RIDER 97