A few of my old Airheads.

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

Found some old pictures i haven't seen in years.
Lets start with the RS models.

My two RS Motorsports.
I fitted one with wire wheels. Can't remember the reason why, it was a long time ago, perhaps because i just simply had a spare set of wheels.
Wre Wheels

Cast Wheels.

Think i sold the reg number for the price i paid for the bike

The smoked red bike.

The Rat. Used for years, never washed,the service schedule was an oil change every MOT. Ultra reliable and used to annoy the feck out of the BMW owners club members.

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

The R80/7 Police Special Escort bike.... Think it had 16k miles on it.

55BHP instead of the standard 50bhp, proper factory job, including the very rare higher final drive ratio (can't remember the exact ratio) and matching speedo number.
Bought at the ADT Car Auction in Enfield, they were put through one morning with the commercial vehicles so no other serious bidders were there.
So me and another bloke who used to buy police bikes shared all the bikes on sale. Around £600 each, all low miles.
I kept two and sold four. All went within a week.

I was finally persuaded to sell this one after i was made an offer i couldn't refuse. One of those i should've kept. I've still got YYX 209T somewhere, it might have 20k miles on it by now.

elgringo · Jun 8, 2020

WWC1S is on a Land Rover 109 now.

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

elgringo said:
WWC1S is on a Land Rover 109 now.

Yes, i know

Khulu · Jun 8, 2020

Nice collection over the years!

elgringo · Jun 8, 2020

By the way, I forgot to say, nice bikes.

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

Look carefully at the bike on the right.... The left cylinder is missing. The crashbar is still dangling but all out of shape.
It's a police bike that hit something solid. So soiled that the lefthand cylinder was completely ripped off, the conrod was bent back inline with the engine case

This was in the police bike auction. The auctioner said "it can't be ridden or pushed into the hall, it's in the compound, it's damaged and you all know what a police bike looks like, so for todays entertainment you're all bidding blind"....
It started at £5 and went up in £1 increments...
I won the auction, the final bid was £55

Oh how we laughed when we saw it .. still, the alternator rotor alone was worth £50

.

.

More pictures later. I've a few garages to clear out.

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

Here’s an interesting one. A racing sidecar outfit. A neighbours brother had a block of lock-up garages, and one of the tenants hadn’t paid any rent for more than a year, so he did the legal bit served him notice he was taking any goods left as payment etc etc . He knocked on my door and said we might have something of interest to you... I ended up with this. I took it down the A3 with a set of trade plates on it, the open ended carbs kept sucking in my overalls

I’m not sure how fast it actually was but being only a few inches away from the road surface it felt like steering a missile, didn’t help that the car drivers couldn’t see you as it was so low, but they could hear it. I sold it on ASAP, saw it up for sale at Kempton park auto jumble about a year later, bloke was asking £10k for it

Khulu · Jun 8, 2020

Steptoe said:
Look carefully at the bike on the right.... The left cylinder is missing. The crashbar is still dangling but all out of shape.
It's a police bike that hit something solid. So soiled that the lefthand cylinder was completely ripped off, the conrod was bent back inline with the engine case

This was in the police bike auction. The auctioner said "it can't be ridden or pushed into the hall, it's in the compound, it's damaged and you all know what a police bike looks like, so for todays entertainment you're all bidding blind"....
It started at £5 and went up in £1 increments...
I won the auction, the final bid was £55

Oh how we laughed when we saw it .. still, the alternator rotor alone was worth £50

.

.

More pictures later. I've a few garages to clear out.

That's a brilliant collection of "unseen for many years" BMWs!

I'll watch out for your next "for sale" one.

Ex-police model maybe????

Paul G (BHT) · Jun 8, 2020

Steptoe said:

I've seen that Granada somewhere before

Steptoe · Jun 8, 2020

Paul G (BHT) said:
I've seen that Granada somewhere before

When I was a tax exile ..

The old Mk2.

15mpg if you were lucky.

The Other PaulG · Jun 8, 2020

That smoked red RS still looks fabulous - in my opinion!

Gelandestrasse · Jun 8, 2020

Steptoe said:
The R80/7 Police Special Escort bike....

I've still got YYX 209T somewhere, it might have 20k miles on it by now.

I had YYX158T for a while - was that one of them?

Posh Pete · Jun 8, 2020

Steptoe said:
Here’s an interesting one. A racing sidecar outfit. A neighbours brother had a block of lock-up garages, and one of the tenants hadn’t paid any rent for more than a year, so he did the legal bit served him notice he was taking any goods left as payment etc etc . He knocked on my door and said we might have something of interest to you... I ended up with this. I took it down the A3 with a set of trade plates on it, the open ended carbs kept sucking in my overalls I’m not sure how fast it actually was but being only a few inches away from the road surface it felt like steering a missile, didn’t help that the car drivers couldn’t see you as it was so low, but they could hear it. I sold it on ASAP, saw it up for sale at Kempton park auto jumble about a year later, bloke was asking £10k for it

Laughed out loud at that tale, Neil. The blessing of trade plates, eh! That Special Polis bike, was it SEG then? (171T)

Oldrat · Jun 8, 2020

Fabulous pics, I’m loving those old airheads mod and mot as time goes on

:beerjug:

timeandtide · Jun 8, 2020

Enjoyed those very much - thanks for posting Steppers!

Steptoe · Jun 11, 2020

Another old RS of mine. Unfortunately I never got to do any long tours on this one. Sold it in 1993/4.

Steptoe · Jun 11, 2020

Loved riding this wire wheeled R100S. Removed the nose fairing and fitted Flat bars from a 1980’s Honda CB900F. For some reason this was one of best handling older BMW’s I owned. Took it to Europe a couple times for short week long rides............... anyone notice the usual mistake made with old airheads, easily spotted if you look at the previous RS to compare

MMC · Jun 11, 2020

My old RSes were always twitchy over white lines and overbanding and any other ruts in the road. Was that just me being a wuss or are they a bit twitchy?

Still miss mine - lovely bike for covering a lot of miles is a day.

Noddy · Jun 11, 2020

Lots of HT lead going spare.

A few of my old Airheads.

What a waste.

What a waste.

Well-known member

What a waste.

Well-known member

Well-known member

What a waste.

What a waste.

Attachments

Well-known member

Creator

Attachments

What a waste.

Still searching

Well-known member

Still got a pulse.

So much better now Engineer is on ignore

Well-known member

What a waste.

Attachments

What a waste.

Attachments

Well-known member

Some sort of clique thing

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