Years later I managed to save enough to buy my first road bike, get my license and leave. After a variety of road and track bikes, I ended up with a bobbed 86 foot Harley Sportster. I had seen some of the street scramblers and cafe racers that were being produced by people like cafe racer dreams and down and out and in my eyes BMWs were the only bikes worth doing this kind of build with.”
Reading: Bmw r80rt cafe racer
timotei found the basis for his build, a 1983 bmw r80rt, on ebay. After meeting with the buyer and negotiating what he considered a “good price,” he hauled the BMW back to his shed. Unfortunately, she soon realized that she was going to have a lot of work ahead of her. the big beemer had been sitting around for about five years and had a mouse nest in the airbox to prove it. Fortunately, after cleaning everything up and running fresh fluids through the socket, she passed her mot and the real work could begin. she soon discovered that an infestation of mice was the least of her worries.
Inside the engine rocker covers was a bucket full of silicone. after the heads were freed, their presence was attributed to some badly deformed and false heads. Luckily Tim’s dad came to the rescue with his recently purchased CNC milling machine which they used to mill and skim the heads. while the headers were off the bike they also treated the engine with a complete rebuild and the exhaust headers were sent in for re-chroming.
after a flurry of ebay, a host of new parts showed up on tim’s doorstep and packages containing a new subframe, flat seat and fenders from down & among them were the cafe racers themselves. Not wanting to change things on the bike just for the hell of it, a conscious decision was made to keep the stock air system for bulletproof reliability.
A new headlight was soon installed along with ace bars, levers and a motogadget m switch to replace the rt’s old factory switches. while on the front-end theme, the brake lines have also been upgraded, the spokes and rims have been replaced with shiny new ones, and a firestone cross-ply kit has been installed for that off-road look and feel. old school/d&o. then an aluminum battery box was thrown in behind the stock airbag between the below mentioned & seat, subframe and rear protection.
New paint adorns every surface of Tim’s car, including the tank, which is a color that made a big impression on Tim when he was just a little boy. “color for me was a no-brainer. this was decided in 1996 when i first saw a bmw z3 in blue…at 10 years old i thought it was so classy i told myself if i ever owned a bmw it had to be that colour”. all frames also pickled and powder coated black. While he was away, Tim was preoccupied with painting his tank, so he called in another favor from his jack-of-all-trades father to show him how to get the perfect finish. Tim also painted the black accents which came out better than a factory finish. “… it’s all thanks to my old man… and his patience!” says tim.
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After recently purchasing a lathe, Tim decided to delve even deeper into construction with a bit of DIY fabrication. “I decided to make as many fixings, spacers and brackets as I could. this meant many long nights playing with my new lathe until I figured out how it worked. this also led to my wife coming up with the phrase “you’re not going to be canning tonight!”.
“Now that the bike is ready, the handling is unreal and there’s no better feeling than sticking your elbows in, leaning countersteering, and opening it up.” Due to all the obstacles, Tim ran into himself during the course of building the bike and ended up being affectionately referred to as “the little blue bastard.” Whatever you call it, Tim’s hard work certainly paid off, which is especially apparent when you compare the transformed R80RT to its previous touring upright setup.
Timotei, an Englishman from Evesham in Worcestershire, is no stranger to motorcycles. “I got my first bike when I was 6 years old, a ty50 trials and it was great. My brother had just bought a big wheel CR80 and he had started riding motocross the year before and I thought that was for the best. dad was a mechanic and kept me and my brother on bikes doing motocross until my brother left for college and we couldn’t afford to keep him going.
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