Bought this little baby on eBay! Maybe not as pretty to look at as the R12, but a whole lot cheaper and it started easily.

The PO (previous owner) was just over the hill in Palo Alto. He had owned the bike for a while, more than a decade, but he didn't seem to know very much about the bike. He had bought it from the first owner, a German expat who brought it over with him, and that seemed to jibe with the information from BMW's archives that said the bike was sold to a dealer in middle Germany. He had some receipts for work done, but not from anyone reputable. They were just notes written on pages torn from a little spiral bound notepad.

The bike started easily enough but you absolutely couldn't touch the throttle until it was completely hot. Even then, it stumbled off idle. A quick ride around told me that the transmission needed some kind of adjustment because it did not like to shift into 2nd. Otherwise, it handled and braked ok. And these plunger frame bikes are so cute! They're right down on the ground and feel zippy, like a go-kart.

So what if the coil was dying, or a leakdown test showed a lot of blowby past the rings? It's just a hobby, after all. Within a year or so I had rebuilt the motor and my friend Brian had rebuilt the transmission. A bore job to 3rd over, new pistons and rings, touch up the valves and a new rear main bearing carrier was all, really. The problem with the transmission turned out to be a tab on the case under the right cover that had been broken and welded back in slightly the wrong place. Nothing that a case swap couldn't fix. Some new bushings and bearings were helpful, too.

Then it was off and riding!