R1100S - second impressions

[AJB]

Well, I went to ride it today as it is apparently going to be the only sunny weekend over the bank holiday ....and all I get is the relay clicking. Inexplicably flat battery.

X5's are notorious for this, so my first thought is that it extends to the bikes too.

As I do not (yet) have a trickle charger (and I wanted to ride), I thought I will just connect up my heavy duty shop charger / starter unit. Oh silly me.

The battery accessibility (rather like on the X5) was designed by an idiot. That may be being generous.

Seat off. Both side panels off (16 bolts - mixture of torx and hex - two of them hard to get to), indicators disconnected. Tank cover and filler off (8 hex and 8 torx as I recall), flexible air hose disconnected, air filter cover off (3 torx) and finally there is enough access to the battery. To remove it though, the tank has to be lifted as well.

Frankly this is a silly piece of design.

It has become very windy, so maybe it is best I am not out on the bike anyway. The downside is that now the girlfriend will insist I do some jobs in the garden.

A

[snavetrauts]

Taking the plastics off is a 5 minute job.... literally, when you have done it a few times. I personally do not take of the central panel with filler as you can get to all the bits w/out doing so.

Keep the faith... you WILL enjoy it.

Stuart

[AJB]

The upside is that it has given me a chance to inspect the bike closely.

It is 5 years old and looks like new. Not a trace of corrosion or dirt anywhere, except for a few rust spots on a couple of tools and some corrosion on the license disk holder. There is also a tiny split in the (non-standard) rear hugger. And the spare bulb is missing.

It is so immaculate that it is a bit odd really. The bike has done 16,000 miles so it has been used.

As regards panel removal, only the positive side of the battery can be accessed if the tank cover and air filter pipe are not removed. Having stripped it so far, I thought I may as well continue and see what state the bike is in. And the answer is incredibly good.

[timbox2]

The upside is that it has given me a chance to inspect the bike closely.

It is 5 years old and looks like new. Not a trace of corrosion or dirt anywhere, except for a few rust spots on a couple of tools and some corrosion on the license disk holder. There is also a tiny split in the (non-standard) rear hugger. And the spare bulb is missing.

It is so immaculate that it is a bit odd really. The bike has done 16,000 miles so it has been used.

As regards panel removal, only the positive side of the battery can be accessed if the tank cover and air filter pipe are not removed. Having stripped it so far, I thought I may as well continue and see what state the bike is in. And the answer is incredibly good.

Bought mine last year, when it was 7 years old and 28,000 miles, similar condition, now another year older and 45.000, and people still comment on how new it looks, they do scrub up remarkably well if the salt isnt allowed to take hold. Battery is a pain, at least ive got a optimate lead on mine, but as has been said, I can now get all the plastics off in a few minutes

[snavetrauts]

You have obviously had a good owner..... mine was a BMW pressbike and has seen 2 owners since 2003.... both of which, did not take a lot of care of the usual bits like forks and front engine cover.



Everything else is great and the engine is sweet (they say that an "active" run in period is good for this engine.

While you are at it put some optimate flying leads on her or buy the very useful option of a power socket.... the loom is already for this and I now use this for the optimate connection.

I hope you enjoy her as much as I do.

Good luck

Stuart

[madman]

All that hassle to connect jump leads. Why didn't you just remove the starter cover (1 bolt) and connect there? Later machines have a positive terminal on the outside of the starter cover.

[AJB]

Well, madman, if I had read this first, I would have done exactly that!

The bike does in fact have a power socket as standard (mentioned in the handbook) that can be connected to a BMW trickle charger apparently. But it seems to require a special male connector plug, so was no good to me on the day.