1973 BMW R-Series

2998247

One final time and will try to set this up so it's a sale instead of an auction. If she doesn't go this time, I could've used the money but have other ways to get it and I'm wondering if a serious buyer stepping up to the plate will result in the same seller's remorse I've had on an 82 CBX with 6k miles and a clock when I sold it for $1500 or any of the many H2's I've had or.... I've had this one long enough and it's just not very "me", though it's one of the most charming bikes I've ever had in that it's a real looker, real reliable (though it rewards proper TLC) and real uncomfortable on long rides when you're my age. Its Spartan simplicity is cool and the weird locations of some controls takes getting used to, but not like the Triumph I was idling in my driveway mumbling "brake on the left, brake on the left" in neutral as I coasted to what I thought would be a stop, and I suppose it was. After I hit the brake on the right side instead of the left and put it through my garage door. This one's "weird" in some ways, but not like a Brit bike. I don't need it now with cold weather approaching and I could put the money to good use doing other things, so what I'm trying to do is just sell it outright for $2800. I don't even want to do this as an auction. First person serious enough about it to hit the button and pay the deposit has themselves a mighty fine machine. Not sure what else I can do to get it sold, as anyone watching knows I'm now asking for a price lower than this machine will EVER be worth come spring. They go up every year, not down. Auctions are kind of fun, but I think maybe it'll be more fun when someone sees the bike (as I've done on many of them I have and not been burned yet), looks at the pics, reads the description that perhaps is a little too entertaining and doesn't really *pitch* the bike because I'm not in salesman mode. But will be in the next paragraph. But I can imagine someone seeing it, knowing the price is a bargain, perhaps contemplating it for a while, then noticing that others have looked at it and are contemplating the same thing and it boils down to who's the quickest draw on the Buy button. Salesman mode, the way I do it when selling ad space on my website: This is a fine, high quality machine, respected and often revered by one of the most valuable demographics out there. Frills? Nope. Do you want to fix things or do you want to ride? How's this for a frill? You turn what passes for a key, push the choke at least halfway down, press a button, and take off. Not 99.9% of the time. 100% of the time. You can't kill it with a sledgehammer! Snatch this thing up before I decide I'm going to wait until next year and hold out for a much higher price while also riding it. And definitely snatch it up before that other guy does. You see him watching, wondering the same things. Now which of you is the more decisive, since it's obvious you both have great taste in 2-wheeled machines. In fact, I bet this local call is responding to my local ad, so you'd better click quickly or I'm gonna go with the guy who has no delivery difficulty to add to the transaction. Though I'd welcome a road trip and will charge my real costs for the round trip with a rented pickup truck rather than charging per mile in an attempt to profit from delivery or not lose money on it anyway. I'd like to say it doesn't matter where she's going, but I don't think I'm up for a 1500-mile trip each way, and you don't want to pay what that'd cost. Oh, and I want to comment on something. I'm a bit of a purist. I don't insist everything be correct unless it's the only copy I've got or it's a rare unit, but I cringe at things like stripping an old survivor paintjob to respray it some color God nor BMW intended the bike to be. I saw that a cafe conversion sold recently and I believe it'd been restored. I've restored many a bike and have all I need to do it and Winter will give me the time. At first I was put off by that cafe bike, but heaven help me that bike was gorgeous! And I've always been a fan of cafe style, having done the same with a number of my bikes, most notably the XS650 I had in Germany. Okay, the verbiage below has accumulated through 2 previous auctions, one in which the bidder stepped the price up in increments of $100 in the course of a minute or two to discover the reserve and, in the process, put himself $1000 above the second highest bidder, with 3 days left in the auction, abusing the system and this seller, but when giving Feedback on a seller, one can only give positives. Ain't that something? Second time around, the people at the top of the list, who very well might be at work right now and have decided to look for the 2nd chance offers they've had most of the day and act on them, had bid but were a little unsure. You takes your chances here, but I've simply never been burned on a purchase here. And won't burn anyone else. I have a reputation outside eBay that's terribly important to me and it'd never do to have reports of my having ripped someone off on a $3k bike. And just so you know and don't think it's a bad bike, if you park it on the sidestand (the centerstand is unusually hard to use, and I used to use it on my 700-lb luxotourers), it WILL smoke on startup if it's sat any length of time. My 2005 K1200LT, which cost me $21,500, did the same and it's not a boxer! There are even stories of BMW reps who are going along on club trips who put every bike on its centerstand to save the marque the embarassment of causing the evacuation of a town when they all start. On to the sale. Trying again with a low-verbiage insertion. I've always wondered why so many sellers seem to show so much attitude in their ads, but I get it now. Last buyer not only didn't read the terms of the ad, but hasn't paid even the deposit, let alone the purchase price. This kind of conduct is why so many ads require clearance from the seller before they'll allow a bid, or flat out say they won't accept bids from people with fewer than x number of feedbacks. I'll do it a bit differently. Feel free to bid even if you're new here. I may contact you whether you're new or not and I reserve the right to yank your bid for whatever reason floats my boat at the time. I'm going to make this a very short auction, too, as I'm really kinda tired of stepping around a motorcycle in my living room, despite it looking awesome there, and it wasn't easy deciding to sell her and I don't want to drag this out much longer. Low-verbiage version inserted up front because I was just asked "Do you want to sell a motorcycle or wax poetic about it while trying to be entertaining?" To which I answered "Why can't it be both." So, here's the low-bandwidth version, then the version I first wrote and like better: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm selling my 73 BMW R75/5 that has the long wheelbase, both types of fuel tanks available for it, and the most popular fairing and saddlebags that were available for it. Please buy my motorcycle and give me a lot of money for it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original version: Trying again but with a LOT more pictures and a low reserve. Selling an unmolested, beautiful 1973 BMW R75/5 that's in excellent condition mechanically and cosmetically. I've owned literally hundreds of bikes in my life and "The Brave Little Toaster" has earned a special place in my heart, but I'm in ruthless simplification mode, so she gets to be someone else's trusty steed. And as charming as this bike is and how perfectly it just is what it is, it ain't my style. Let's go over some of the details that people who are interested in such bikes care about. Negatives first: When ridden fairly aggressively, gear oil ends up on the back wheel. I don't know these bikes intimately enough to know if that's as much a part of its DNA as the smoke cloud at startup when you use the side stand (imagine my surprise when my 05 K1200LT did the same!) or if I'm overfilling, or something needs adjusting or replacing. Me, I clean it up and call it good. The aforementioned startup cloud that you can see from Google Earth if you time it right. Okay, exaggeration, but until I had a brand new K bike do the same, I wondered if it might not be a valve guide and seal issue. I haven't quite gotten the hang of positioning the pushrods when adjusting valve lash, so to my ear the valvetrain clicks too loudly. I suspect it's pushrod positioning; not lash. It's always right on the money though I haven't tried tightening up the lash as I've seen suggested because I like an air-cooled engine's exhaust valves to spend as much time closed (and cooling) as possible and have seen too many burned exhaust valves on other bikes despite having at least some lash. There's a small tear on each side of the seat that's pretty hard to see, but knowing it's there is enough to really bug me and probably anyone who'd purposely search for an old BMW on eBay. There's minor rust spots on the right muffler that, if they're going to come out, are going to need more aggression than I want to use. I like naked bikes, but I guess now that I'm old I prefer looking at them rather than riding them at 70+ mph. But I just can't get myself to like the looks of the fairing and bags and know it knocks the fuel economy into a cocked hat along with the acceleration it otherwise has at highway speed. Positives: You make new friends at every fuel stop and sometimes at stop signs. It's a great example/minor variation of the concept of "Set it and....... Forget it." Fuel, oil, an occasional loving or respectful removal of some of the bugs on the front and the dust on the rest and the most mental energy you'll ever put into this bike is remembering where the key is. It demands nothing from you. Ever. Just start it and it's ready to go 5 blocks or to one of the coasts; whatever floats your boat at the time. I've got the idle set so low that on a pretty hot day I'll have to blip the throttle occasionally, not to stop it from dying, but to get enough oil pressure to turn off the light. I love how stupid low you can get this bike to idle. You can actually count the revs as it just sits there ticking over so slowly my old Ford 2N keeps going "Sucker's gonna stall anytime. Like right now... Well, dang! You just wait. It will." The 2N doesn't realize just how insane it sounds having this conversation with itself out loud for half an hour as the Beemer taunts it. And I'll thank you to not comment on the fact that I'm aware of this conversation and what said awareness might say about me. Besides, in my defense, the Beemer can attest to these conversations as it's heard them too and just the other day said "Und wo ist dass stuck de scheisse Ford jetzt? Ich habe langsamer-laufen gern." or something like that. It doesn't speak English, but I understand "Ford", so I think it's telling me how much it admires the talkative 2N that's 30 years its senior. I think the second item bears repeating and rephrasing. This thing is friggin' OLD but looks and acts like it's a new bike. Designed by someone who hasn't quite made it out of the time of "Peace, love, and, like, wow man, quit nuking the whales. Far out." I've learned that really is BMW DNA. No matter how old one of their machines is, if it's cared for enough to just plain run at all, it likely feels like you're riding it out of the crate. Has the toaster tank on it for those who, like me, think it's too cute for words, but also has the bigger tank for those who might want to really go obscene distances between refills. I figure that tank would be good for about 400 miles or so. No thank you. That many miles and I'd be worse than numb. Speaking of numb, the engine makes the vibration felt in the seat a side-to-side one rather than the Harley's front-to-back. Get the carbs a tad out of synch and it's more pronounced. I disavow any knowledge of why this might be a positive or a negative and especially why it's in the positives list. I can certainly see why a fairing and bags are good things and I like them; just not on this bike because to me they're just hiding a really great-looking bike. But I've got them and though, not being Deutsch, the years haven't been as kind to them, they're not too bad either. VIN and Engine Number are the same. I'm not used to this, actually, because I'm more of a Japanese bike collector, and they usually don't ship from the factory with numbers that're even in the same order of magnitude, but to me the matching numbers thing just says the Germans like things to be orderly and make sense. Like we didn't already know that. But it also isn't mch of a surprise to me because this doesn't seem the kind of bike often requiring engine replacement. Anything else and you'll want to check out any of the many online resources about this bike, like that it makes 50 horses and in its day it was a big, fast motorcycle and having seen it indicate 110 with me laying on the tank, I can attest to its ability to go fast, though if you're upright, it's pretty tapped out at around 80. The pictures probably tell this bike's story the best, so I'll shut up and put 'em up. Thanks for reading, bid early and often, and give 'er a good home. Shipping: If you're within 500 miles of me, I'll deliver for $1.00 per one-way mile. If you're further than that, discuss wih me before buying. I might be willing to deliver further. For the most part, though, I expect you to make your own shipping arrangements. If you want it crated, arrange to have the company picking up the bike crate it. The rule of thumb here is that if you don't already work with a company for shipping bikes to you, you should contact me to see if I'll deliver (if you want me to) or if I'm willing to do any specific things required for a different shipper. The bike must be paid for IN FULL before it leaves my property. Even if I'm delivering it, it must be paid for first. More pictures at http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330488866656