My hopes that the BMW seat wouldn’t be as uncomfortable as others had reported were dashed after only two 80 mile rides. Sargent had a pretty good Black Friday special going — 15%off and free shipping — so I ordered a new seat. It arrived today. Sitting on the seat in the garage it’s not immediately obvious that it will be any more comfortable; in fact it felt a bit cramped. However, I’m not going to judge it until I’ve put some miles on it. It appears to be well made.
New Sargent Seat, AltRider Skid Plate and Crash Bars
With both the oil and coolant changed it was finally time to install the skid/bash plate. The AltRider model was more expensive than those from other manufacturers, but in this case it’s obvious that you get what you pay for. The skid plate is thick aluminum and very well made; I don’t think it will bend before the rubber mounts shear. All of the seams are welded, which I like better than the rivets used on other brands.
Installation was easy. The only trick is to leave the front bracket a little loose before mounting the plate and putting in the front engine bracket bolt. I did this to get the bracket properly aligned. I then took the plate off and tightened the bracket bolts before re-installing the plate.
As you can see, the skid plate should do a great job of protecting the oil filter and heat exchanger. Without any stock protection provided by BMW, not even a plastic guard, the engine fluids seemed excessively exposed to damage on this engine, even when riding on paved roads.
The black color makes the plate almost invisible, in spite of the edgy design.
The single screw holding the tube against the block was a bit too easy to loosen. I reinstalled the screws for both tubes with Loctite.
As you can see in the next picture, the 12 x 17 x 2.5mm o-ring didn’t come out with the tube. This o-ring is supposed to be replaced with each coolant change, but the local BMW dealer didn’t have one. I find that odd given how many of these they should be going through when they service these 800cc twins. The dealer claimed only 10 dealerships in the country had any in stock. Come on BMW, how much can it possibly cost to require your dealers to stock regular maintenance parts that retail for less than $2?
I’ll order some of these for the next coolant change and replace both o-rings then. In a pinch — pun intended — if I damage this one, O’Reilly’s Auto Parts did have one of these in stock. Unfortunately is was part of a more expensive assortment kit.
The o-ring size is 12×2.5 mm where 12mm is the inside diameter
Here I’ve slipped the o-ring back over the tube for re-installation. I’ll clean this up a bit more and use a little silicone grease on the o-ring per the service manual when I reinstall the tube.
It’s pretty clear that the specified method for draining the engine leaves a lot of coolant in the system. The tube in the picture above goes up to the lower radiator hose at the bottom of the water pump. Due to the location of the thermostat in the radiator, the radiator hose doesn’t attach at the lowest point on the radiator, and the radiator doesn’t have a drain.
Squeezing the lower radiator hose helped drain a bit more fluid from the system, but I suspect there’s still quite a bit of fluid in the bottom of the radiator. I’m not flushing the system this time, but if I did, I’d flush with new coolant as there’s no way to get all of the flush liquid (e.g. water) out of the system.
Lower heat exchanger tube connects to the lower radiator hose.
It seems that these engines are notoriously hard to bleed, so I bought a vacuum coolant system with the hopes that it would make my life easier. I was a bit worried about using this FJC 43610 kit because of its height. I worried needlessly. It turns out I could get a seal without any difficulties even though I couldn’t insert the cone at the correct angle. The engine air intake, visible behind the gauge in the picture below, limits the vertical clearance above the radiator cap.. If this hadn’t worked, I would have found and fit a right-angle adapter between the cone and the tool’s manifold block. In the picture you can also see a small vice grip I used with a bit of burlap to act as a clamp on the hose going to the expansion tank. Did you notice the collapsed radiator hose?
I was quit surprised that it only took about four seconds to pull a vacuum using the Venturi vacuum generator. I’m glad; I don’t have a large compressor.
FJC 43610 Vacuum Coolant Filler. Coolant is hung from the hand guard using a zip tie.
Before inserting the tool into the radiator I put my finger over the end of the cone to form a vacuum and then slowly opened the red valve until the tubing was primed with coolant.
In the picture above I’ve drawn a vacuum, but haven’t started filling the cooling system (both valves are closed). You can see the tubing which goes up to the coolant supply jug is free of air.
While the FJC seemed to work exactly as expected in terms of pulling a vacuum, holding a vacuum, and drawing coolant into the system, when the vacuum was depleted, I found there were still a lot of air pockets in the system. I idled the bike for several minutes with the radiator cap removed, watching quite a few burps and topping off as needed. I also bled the screw at the water pump several times without the engine running. I was getting a bit of air at the start.
Coolant Bleed Screw
I think the system is bled now. I ran the bike for quite a while in the garage, and while the temperature gauge went up to its usual mid-scale reading and stayed there, I could never get the fan to come on, even when reving the engine. It was cool in the garage.
The vacuum filler system isn’t the cure-all I’d hoped it would be, but I suspect it did make things easier.
While I had the covers off, I pulled the air filter and cleaned it with compressed air. Except for a couple of bugs, it was pretty clean already.
Changing the brake fluid on this bike is relatively easy. I used the brake-pump method to flush and bleed the brakes. Normally a two-person job, on this bike it was just possible for me to reach and depress the rear brake pedal while simultaneously reaching around the rear tire to open and close the bleed valve on the opposite side of the bike. The front is easier to do solo than the rear as the brake lever and single caliper are both on the right side of the bike.
Helpful Hint: Remove the screw holding the rear brake fluid reservoir to the frame and move the reservoir away from the bike, temporarily routing the hose as shown below. This is how I was able to get it to hang in free-space making it much easier to fill while also reducing the chances of spilling brake fluid onto the bike’s painted surfaces. Not shown are the rags that I used to keep any spill that might occur off of the bike.
Detach rear reservoir from frame and position as shown for easier filling while bleeding
Steps used to change the fluid on each brake:
Flush and bleed per BMW instructions (see note at the end of this post)
Enable the ABS pump using GS-911
Press the brake pedal/lever for two seconds three times while the pump is on (for ten seconds).
Flush and bleed a second time.
This job took less than an hour. Next time I think I could do it in less than 30 minutes.
Helpful Hint: You don’t need a special tool to remove the front reservoir cap, though you can buy one if you want. All you need to do is wrap a piece of string, or thin wire around the reservoir in the gap below the cap. Pull tight to compress the two locking tabs and then unscrew the black cap. Worked for me.
Using a piece of string to unlock the front reservoir locking tabs
I’m not sure what BMW engineers were thinking when they came up with this bobble-head design for mounting the front brake reservoir. Besides being ugly, and distracting while riding, over time the constant pressure applied by the preformed hose causes the reservoir to tilt as rubber grommet looses strength where heavily compressed.
Less tilt after rotating the rubber grommet 180 degrees
A Quick Fix for the Tilting Reservoir
After making sure the reservoir lid was tight, and protecting the bike with rags, I removed the screws holding the bracket at the mirror, and then removed the hex-head bolt holding the reservoir counterweight to the reservoir bracket. This allowed me to rotate the rubber grommet 180 degrees. I wasn’t able to rotate the grommet in place as the rubber was stuck to the bracket. Note: When I say rotate I mean around a vertical axis. I don’t mean flip from top to bottom. The later would require complete removal of the grommet from the bracket.
Rotating the rubber grommet had the intended effect of making the reservoir sit more upright as shown above. How long this will last remains to be seen; the hose is still pulling on the reservoir. The grommet (BMW #62 21 7 670 749) is available for about $3. I think I’ll add a couple to my next parts order.
The counterweight bolt was reinstalled with blue Loctite.
Note: If you plan on buying the expensive BMW DVD Service manual to learn about how to work on your ABS brake system, don’t bother. It’s not covered. The only thing I learned from the manual is that there’s a bleed valve on the front master cylinder.
AltRider Skid Plate
