Leanings

LEANINGS

Quagmires

Peter Egan

"I AM GOING OUT TO THF GARAGE," I told Barb one evening, "to put new tires on the BMW."

"How long will you be?"

I stopped to calculate. Well, let's see ... I could change a pair of knobbies on the XL500 in Baja in about 20 or 30 minutes, but this was a streetbike, and I'd never taken the tires off it before, so there might be some tricks and complications. "About an hour-and-a-half," I said. "Two hours, max. I’ll be in at nine to watch 'The Civil War' on PBS."

So. 1 picked up my new sport-touring tires and headed for the garage. The old rear tire on the used Beemer I'd recently purchased was worn flat across the tread, leaving a leanedover footprint not unlike that of a hockey skate. The front tire was badly cupped. It was a wonder 1 hadn't fallen down, just on pure lack of faith.

Changing tires on a streetbike is not one of my favorite things, and I briefly considered taking the bike into the dealer and letting a mechanic use his magic tire-mounting machine. Still, you learn a lot about a newly acquired bike just by taking the wheels off and putting them back on. It's a minimal form of acquaintance and familiarity.

Also, Barb and 1 were planning a long tour late in the summer, and 1 wanted to know if a roadside tire repair was possible with the toolkit and the tire pump under the seat.

Garage lights on. Bike on centerstand. Rear tire first.

New BMW’s have a Monolever rear suspension, where the tubeless-type wheel is simply unbolted, car-style, from the rear hub. My '84 RIGORS, however, is a twin-shocker, and its cast wheels, strangely, require tubes.

So. after removing the saddlebag hardware, 1 unbolted the rear-brake caliper and dangled it out of the way, removed the axle and pulled the wheel away from its drive splines. The wheel is then supposed to snake past the left side of the fender. But it didn't. The previous owner had installed a one-size-over rear tire. So I let the air out.

Still no exit. W’hen all other possibilities have been exhausted, consult the owners manual.

The manual said it may be necessary on some models to tilt the bike on its centerstand in order to remove the rear wheel. So 1 slid a 2x4 under the left side of the stand, which tipped the bike at an unsteady angle. 1 wondered if there normally was a chunk of 2x4 in the toolkit.

Finally, like a stubborn tooth, tire and wheel came out. and 1 set to work de-beading the old tire. It was one of those stiff-sidewall tires, where letting the air out appears to have no effect, as if tire inflation might be redundant. It took about half an hour of struggling with three huge welder's C-elamps (also not included in the toolkit under the seat), a can of silicone spray (ditto) and two sets of large tire irons (ditto again) to break the bead, and another 15 minutes or so to get the tire off the rim.

At eleven o'clock. I sat dow n and had a beer, feeling like I'd been wrestling alligators all evening at Reptile Village. My weekly episode of "The Civil War" had been on for two hours (which I realize is not significant. compared with the war's original length). Ah. well.

The cast wheel, without its tire, looked sad and leprous, with peeling paint and 76.000 miles of road stains. I'd have to beadblast and paint it before I put the new tire on. On close inspection, the old brake rotor was also badly scored, and the pads needed replacing. The rear hydraulic line had been rubbing on the swingarm and was worn almost through.

So. the next day. I sealed off the bearings and beadblasted the wheel at my friend Chris' shop. Then. I ordered a new rear-brake rotor ($122). two minuscule spray cans of gen-uwine BMW-silver wheel paint (originality, you know)for $ I 2 each, a $36 brake hose and a set of $18 pads, it took about two weeks for the parts to filter in. and then 1 realized 1 needed new locking tabs for the brake rotor. Another week.

I primed the wheel with poisonous (but effective) zinc-chromate primer, painted the wheel with the silver paint and spraxed on a clear oxercoat. Beautiful. l ire mounting next, then drive into Madison for computer-balancing. I inallx. I installed the wheel on the bike.

It was so clean and bright it looked almost luminous. Noxx. of course, the front wheel (which 1 had not planned to paint because, originate, it looked okay) now suffered by comparison. So I repeated the entire aboxe operation on the front —beadblast. paint and all. Another two weeks.

One of the front-wheel bearings had a catch in it. so I decided to take the wheel down to C&D BMW in Freeport. Illinois, where they have the correct bearing pullers to replace or repack bearings. As long as I was making the trip, it seemed worthwhile to get the rear bearings checked and repacked, too. I took the rear wheel back off the bike and drove to Illinois.

Af ter all this, the wheels and new tires are now back on the bike, and they look great and feel good at last.

I've also learned a couple of things. First, if the Beemer has a flat. I won't try to fix it by the side of the road: You need big tools to de-bead the tire and 75 psi of air pressure (and lots of soap or silicone) to re-bead it. If we have a flat. I'll remove the \x heel (local 2x4 supply permitting) and hitchhike to a gas station.

Second, there's no such thing as a two-hour repair on a 76,000-mile motorcycle. The wandering, critical eye always finds a dozen peripheral parts to restore and problems to fix.

In this particular case. I began changing tires during the fall of Fort Sumter in 1861 and finished just in time to see Lee and Grant sit down together at Appomattox Courthouse in 1865. Like the Civil War itself, these things always take longer than anyone expects.