Buying a beautiful bike on first sight after completing an easy restoration is like going shopping at the market while stoned — you're going to be asking yourself "what was I thinking?" for a long time to come.

Purchase in haste, repent in leisure. My R12 is my problem child. It's a perfect example of what not to do. And at this point, I can only hope that it will someday be fun to ride, because it won't ever be a good example of the species.

The year after I successfully restored my basketcase R60/2, I happened into this complete bike. A real beauty, too! And it only cost about double what my restored R60/2 was worth at the time. Sure, it was a bit of a struggle to start, and it was pretty wobbly on its front forks, but I did actually ride it home from the dealer's shop! That was a lot closer than what I started with on the R60.

Background

In 1997 Paul, the owner of Cascade BMW, had a customer who came from South Africa. He had a good sized collection of old bikes, including a 1936 R12. At one point, Paul asked him if he'd consider selling the R12, and the answer was yes. Paul liked the bike, it was beautifully restored and ran ok, too. The customer told Paul that if he was interested, he knew where there was another R12 in South Africa. Paul put the bike up as a display piece in his showroom.

About 6 months later, this guy walks into the shop. He sees the R12 and immediately begins talking to Paul about buying it, offering rather a lot of money, I later heard. But Paul steadfastly refused, and instead told him he knew of another bike. The guy was a businessman from Japan on a trip in the Seattle area. They made a deal and Paul told him he'd be in contact when the bike arrived.

So, Paul talked to his customer, the customer talked to his friend in South Africa, a deal was reached, money was sent, the bike was crated and shipped, and finally, it entered the US on the east coast. At this point, several months further on, Paul called the Japanese businessman to complete this half of the deal. "Haven't you been reading the papers? There has been a financial crash in Asia and I haven't got any money to spare right now."

The next week the second R12 arrived.

Into the Abyss

Two days later, I walked into the shop. I was immediately taken with the idea of an R12 (truth to be told, I also lusted for the display bike). I did no real investigation; Paul said the bike ran, and that was a lot better than how my R60 came. As the R60 hadn't been that difficult, why should this be much different?

Well, the bike took about 2 or 3 dozen kicks to get it to light. I did ride it home, and that was the longest ride it made for a very long time. Most of the time, it wouldn't fire at all, and it was perplexing because everything seemed ok. Finally, after quite a long time of indecision paralysis, I bit the bullet, demounted the magneto, and sent it off to Hans Radstaak in the Netherlands. He had it for about 3 months and refurbished it. When it came back, and after spending a long time getting it timed with the motor, it finally would start sometimes, but didn't run well.

So I tried to move on to the next logical issue: the freaking valves, which were essentially unadjustable without the bent wrenches that were in the original toolkit — an item that did not come with the bike. I did grind down some wrenches, and very eventually felt that I had gotten the valves adjusted and locked in the right positions, although it was truly very frustrating. After several years of ranting about it, someone clued me in to the hub wrenches that are commonly sold in bicycle stores. These are thin and made of stamped steel. They are very easy to bend and grind, and now I have wrenches that allowed me to be sure of the valve settings. So this got me a bit further on, but it still wasn't completely right.

I did realize eventually that the twin carbs were not originals. In fact they were made of some greenish-bronze colored material and had no maker's mark that I could find. I fiddled with them a lot, but got no satisfaction. Eventually, I got in contact with John Lacko, who bought me an original Sum carburetor and the big aluminum intake manifold and exhaust risers for preheat when he visited the big Veterama swap meet in Germany. This finally got me to the point where the bike would start and run, but it wouldn't idle consistently. It had to either be set for a pretty high idle, from which it would vary up and down in speed, or else it would slow down and die. Eventually I came to realize that the slide, which was very loose in the bore, represented a huge air leak. So I got Joe Groeger to make a new slide.

At this point, the bike would start and run and idle pretty reliably. The only problem left with the motor was that it leaked a lot of oil. In fact, in a 10 mile run, it would fill the right floorboard with oil. With that much oil, you wouldn't think it would be a mystery to determine where it was coming from, but it was all over the place. I cleaned it up and dusted the right side with baby powder, and ran it around just long enough to find out that the oil was coming out of the rear main seal, thrown outward by the flywheel, and coming out of the window in the front of the bell housing! At this point, the motor was removed and went to Germany for an overhaul.

At the same time, the opportunity to ride the bike a little showed that something was wrong with the forks. The vaunted first-ever production hydraulically damped telescopic forks seemed to have a hitch. When heeled over into a turn, there was a point where the bike would make a sudden jerk and fall much further into the turn. It was a bit scary, really. So, I tore into them.

Oh, and I had noticed that the transmission wouldn't stay in 2nd gear under engine braking. I could hold the gear shift lever in place, and that would work, but that required the use of the right hand, which might be needed for throttle or brake action. My good friend Brian, former chief BMW mechanic and the rebuilder of the transmission in my R51/3 told me he would be happy to work on rebuilding the transmission.

So, finally the whole bike just came apart. At this point, with just the frame in hand, it was possible to finally see what a twisted pretzel it was. Not only was it twisted, it had been in a terrible accident.

So, the frame had to be straightened. It went out to The Frame Man in Sacramento. I don't think he knew what he was getting in to. However, it did come back much closer to straight than it went out, and it only took about three weeks.

During this time I also noticed that the wheels weren't of the original type. I had heard good things about the surprisingly inexpensive wheels being sold by Leszek Lyzwinski of Oldtimer Garage in Poland and ordered a pair. When I took apart the old wheels, I found that the bearings were already Polish. And when the motor came apart, the main bearings were Russian.

In my mind…

This really, finally burst my bubble about this bike. I guess I had just fallen into the idea that, as it came from South Africa, it must have been left by the retreating German army and migrated south, to end up in the comfort and protection of a collection there for many years. Now I could not avoid facing up to the fact that this bike had indeed been left by the retreating army, but in eastern Europe, where it had then spent 45 years or more ploughing fields and taking the family to market on Saturday. When it wouldn't run, it was made to run again.

So, I learned how to spoke my wheels. The motor came back a year later. I assembled it. I put the bike back together to a "rolling chassis" stage and installed the motor.

Brian came down from Seattle for a day with the transmission, which now had more than $1000 of new parts in it. He couldn't put the transmission together by himself because the kickstarter had to be held in just the right position while the heated case was placed over everything. Together we just barely had enough hands to do it.

I then put the transmission into the frame. It was a bit of a struggle. And after I got it in, I found… the kickstarter was jammed. So I took it out and, through the opening for the shift lever on top, I poked and prodded, but nothing looked wrong and nothing would release the kickstarter. I dreaded taking the transmission apart again, but no brilliant ideas occured to me. So I did take it apart. I found a way to assemble it by myself, too — and a good thing, too. Part of the assembly process, once the case is closed, is to install the shift forks through the top openning. Each fork receives a spring and a ball bearing into a recess, and a rod is driven through. The balls fall into detents cut in the rod and make for positive shift locations. But I found it difficult to get the rod in without losing a ball bearing into the bottom of the case. The natural place for them to roll to was under a gear, where there was not enough clearance to roll around, and to there become stuck. I had to disassemble and reassemble the case six times before I succeeded.

So, here I am today, 11 years on. I am still waiting for the painter to finish some of the body work. I have been building my own wiring harness meanwhile. When I get the painted parts and finish the rest of the bike assembly, I will install the cylinders, rings and pistons, and heads. Hopefully that will not take very much longer, but with this bike, who knows.