Aug. 31st - Sept. 2nd, 2012

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The 2011 BMW motorcycle raffle

The raffle bike is back for the 2011 Bonneville Vintage GP and it's being built by BMW/TRIUMPH of Salt Lake! FINAL UPDATE XX - Congratulations to Steve Werr in Idaho, the winner of the 2011 raffle bike. Okay then, the whole enchilada with the pickle sauce has been placed where the donkey can’t stand it anymore. What that means more specifically is that we have been to Miller Motorsports Park for this year’s running of the Bonneville Vintage GP. And you know what that means, it means that the lucky winner Steve Werr from Idaho has been chosen and informed that he is now the proud owner of a brand new, old motorcycle! I did not get to speak with him personally but I have been informed that he purchased 2 raffle tickets just to take a chance. It just goes to show that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to win; you just have to be in it to win it! We still have a couple small touches to put on the machine before it goes to its new home. Once completed it will wrap up this year’s raffle bike project. If I had it to do all over again there are many things I would have done differently. But hindsight is always twenty- twenty and seeing as how I actually see about as good as I hear you can do the math. I would like to thank all of our generous sponsors for their contributions without whom this project could never have been approached. Also a huge thanks to our fabricator for his dedication to getting the project done regardless of the crazy stuff we were asking him to do! If you ever need anything made or modified, Dustin Francis at DP Custom Fabrication is the guy to ask. He is simply put, a genius! Also I want to thank Mr. Tom Kullen for asking us to do this project and for convincing so many manufacturers to contribute their products. (He really does sell ice to Eskimos, really!) And finally I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to Mr. Dave Kamanski and Mr. Lonnie Woodard for their tireless hours of assistance in getting all the stuff handled.. you know what stuff I mean, thanks guys! And last but not least I want to both thank and apologize to my General Manager and my Parts Manager without whose tireless efforts the project would not have come to completion. I did not realize how big a chunk I had bitten off until it was too late. Without these two guys helping and pushing through thick and thin there would have been no bike at all. I cannot tell you how many hours we were here long past the time when normal people go home, pounding our heads against what seemed like an immovable object. But none the less the object moved and moved until it transformed into something that in my personal opinion is quite beautiful and special. This has been the most difficult custom bike build of my life. Starting with just a pile of parts, literally disassembled and taken apart down to the last fastener and then trying to make something from that was difficult in the enth degree. But we did it and the result is below for you to see in case you did not get to the track this time around. Until next time, this is “tales from the corner”……. UPDATE XIIII Well the build is still in process and by the time this hits any of the newsletters the fat lady will have belted out a tune. We are up to our elbows in problems and have been sorting them out until the wee small hours of the nights and working on the weekends. We get one thing handled and another comes up. Such as making crank shims in the right size to obtain the clearance needed on our crankshaft. Also not to be forgotten is having the front wheel hub physically cut in half and re-welded in order to obtain the needed clearance for our duals disc brakes! This is only some of the fun and adventure we have been having and it is still not done. We are hoping to get our bodywork fitted tonight and off to paint tomorrow. The guys are out trying to have cables made in the right lengths and with the right ends to fit our Mikuni’s. Pipes still need mufflers made and we are awaiting parts to finish the top end. The heads as it turned out needed new valve guides and valves so off to Kibblewhite Precision they went and have returned looking extra spiffy. Hand controls and foot controls are just about sorted out but not without some headaches. The big question now is will it be a runner for the races or will we have to put the finishing touches on it and ship it after the races? Don’t know yet but we sure are trying with everything we got. Our poor powder coater Lonnie at Skinny's has been running parts back and forth like a madman. He has got to be at the end of his rope with us. Our machine shop/fabricator Dustin is currently machining spacers in order to give the rotors the proper clearances. If you need anything made, machined, welded the man is a genius and master craftsman! The kind folks at Motoradd Electrik were nice enough to send us a rotor and alternator as the ones that came with the corpse had shuffled off of this mortal coil. Tom Kullen our resident snake charmer has been convincing manufactures all over the place that we are worthy of their contributions and has performed miracles again and again. UPDATE XIII - 8/27/2011 Photographs provided on 8/26/2011 by BMW/Triumph of Salt Lake. 8/26/2011 Photographs provided on 8/26/2011 by BMW/Triumph of Salt Lake. 8/23/2011 Additional photographs from BMW/Triumph of Salt Lake. 8/16/2011 With only a few weeks left till the 2011 BVGP, it's time for the final assembly. Here are a few misc. photographs provided by Tom Sill earlier this week. The red flake powdercoated frame and Works Shocks. Engine cases, heads and other parts are back from powdercoating. Porting - before and after. Sorry about the fuzzy 'after' pic. LAST CALL FOR SPONSOR GRAPHICS! Sponsor decals are being submitted to the printer tomorrow. As requested, Barbara Conner Jewelry and Toad Town Racing have been added. Motorrad Unlimited and Disco Volante will also be included. 8/12/2011 We are currently working on all the sponsor logos for the 2011 BVGP raffle bike. If you have donated time and or parts for this years raffle bike build, please contact Tom Kullen or Tom Sill and get us your logo ASAP. In particular we need the Martindale Motorcycle Works logo and also the Motorrad Unlimited logo. Check your email guys. 7/12/2011 Okay, here is the latest update. We have gone through all of my gearbox bits and found the cream of the crop for assembly of the 5 speed. You can see the candidates all neatly laid out below in the picture. We also have all new bearings and seals ready to install. During this build I had to modify the engine cases, to allow clearance for the camshaft lobes. With that completed the engine is ready for initial assembly of the bottom end. All we are waiting for engine wise is for the cylinders to come back from Sam Korologos at S&K Machine, who is contributing all of the work to shorten the cylinders and make them ready for their future adventures. Just to add a little more detail on the cylinder issue, the way that works out is the pistons have been custom made from Venolia blanks with the wrist pins moved up 0.75 of an inch in relation to the piston crown. This enables the stroke to remain the same and does not require shorter connecting rods. Shortened pushrods and pushrod tubes are required however. End compression ratio should be right around 11:1 which will allow it to run somewhat unhappily on high test but super enthusiastically on race gas. My chassis is currently back at DP Fabrication for fairing mount to be installed. Further issues were found with the fairing, as a result of the engine being relocated, we found it necessary to remove some of the fairing to shorten the length of the nose over the front wheel. Mr. Dave Kamanski was kind enough to assist with this process. Also included are some pics of the crankcases in the process of shortening them as well. Our tank also finally arrived from the kind people at Glass from the Past. It can be seen below in one of the mock up shots. I am told that our Dyna III dual spark ignition is on its way as well as some rear sets courtesy of the silver tongued Tom Kullen who it is said, has the ability to sell ice to Eskimos! Did I mention raffle tickets are ONLY $5.00 measly U.S. dollars??!! Buy some today! They are available from Tom Kullen via the Bonneville Vintage GP website or from us here at the shop. UPDATE VII Well I can finally reveal our super top secret engine modification, we were able to obtain custom made pistons which enable us to shorten the actual cylinders on the engine by approximately 38 mm (which by American or British standards is equal an inch and a half). This combined with the moving of the engine both forward and up in the chassis will give a whole heap of increased ground clearance and a better weight bias to boot. Pretty cool! Cylinders and pistons are due back from the machine shop today and then it is off to another machine shop for shortening. Also shown are the re-angled intake tracts, sport cam (last one in the U.S.) and the forks back from RaceTech , re-valved and re-sprung with all the goodies courtesy of Matt Wiley . I thought I would throw in a few more frame shots in as well since I cannot get over all the beautiful welding Dustin at DP Fabrication has done for us and people have just been clamoring for more. The last picture could be called a teaser. Hint, it is not a fancy bedpan. You will notice the very handsome Dave Kamanski modeling in the mock up shot of the fairing. 5/19/2011 Well the frame is back from welding and I have got to say the Dustin at DP Fabrication is a true artist and master of his craft! The work and research he did prior to working on the frame is overwhelming. The frame is just perfect and I can’t wait to see it in powder coat. I have been working on the engine and have it just about ready to do a first assemble and fitment. Bearings have also come in for the trans. We are expecting to see our finished forks today as well as the freshly machined upper triple clamp. I have also been on the phone with some potential new sponsors and may very well have a few items on their way from Italy. See the pics in next article for the massive drool factor! I was also able to procure a final drive in the right ratio to enable this beastie to have some top speed. This was sent to us from the fine folks at Martindale Motorcycle Works in Martindale Texas who just happen to be one of the best sources for hard to find vintage BMW parts in the entire country! The drive along with the 5 speed gear box should work out very well together. Shocks have arrived from Works Performance and look just beautiful! EBC has offered to donate rotors and brake pads which should be on their way. Also as if all that is not enough my custom pistons are also due any minute. And if that is not enough my wheels have come back from Buchanan’s and they are just gorgeous. Stainless steel spokes all polished within an inch of their lives and black rims to match my black powder coated wheels. So with all of that said my evenings are going to be extremely busy getting all of this stuff handled. The plan is to build it complete without paint and powder coat and then dyno and fine tune. Then a complete tear down to finish coat everything and then all back together. No problem! Am I nuts or what? 5/11/2011 Well a lot is happening again this week. Carbs are here from Sudco. A set of beautiful Mikuni VM38’s and mounts. Fuel tank almost complete from Glass From the Past, and another sponsor has stepped up out of nowhere to donate our paint supplies. This latest one is RS Bike Paint and they apparently saw our article on our website and were interested. They will be providing the Perlmutt paint we will be using on the bodywork, along with some clear coat. Very nice people to deal with I might add. I am very happy to have made their acquaintance. We also just got the fork parts back from power coat and they look just fantastic. Just got them off to Race Tech to be turned into working units. With our new front fork we will be able to run Brembo front calipers so we will be doing a complete rebuild on them to ensure they are up to the task. We were able to get a whole bunch of our parts bead blasted and everything has cleaned up really well. We have some repair work to do on some of the finning on the heads and need to have the intake ports re-angled. We are going to polish and ported heads in house courtesy of yours truly. I will also take the opportunity to use the polish/port process to my technicians a lesson in the basics. The hubs came back from powder coat and they can now then ship out to Bucanan’s to be built into beautiful completed wheels courtesy of the generous folks a Buchanan’s Spoke and Rim. Next big project is to get the chassis all handled so it is ready to race. This means off to DP Fabrication to have our engine mounts relocated, the chassis braces install, the swing arm braced, any other sundry incidentals. It will require a couple trips there for mods. Once we have the unit set up as a rolling chassis we need to have all of the fairing mount points installed. At that point we can paint the glass and send the frame off to powder coat. Then it is time for the engine and trans… 5/11/2011 part 2 Okay, I just finished organizing a whole bunch of parts onto their own shelf in order to keep everything under control. We have been busy here so it has been difficult to co-ordinate getting everything together. Today we have had a special surprise arrive. Our frame braces and lightened flywheel just came off of the Fed Ex truck. We weighed a stock one vs. the lightened one and the weight went from 7.87 lbs. to 3.82 lbs. Once again it was like Christmas! Our extra special thanks go out to Ivan Messina and the guys at Motoradd Unlimited LCC! Beautiful stuff! So this means we can get our chassis over to Dustin at DP Custom Fab to get our engine mounts moved, frame braces installed and other sundry bits handled. Also arriving this week was the custom stainless steel brake rod hand made by Philipp and the expert team at M-Ped Engineering. It is of course, like a piece of jewelry. It should look really nice installed on this beauty. I also enjoyed talking with Pierre, the suspension genius at Works performance to get the rear suspension just right for this beast. If you want to talk suspension he is the guy to talk to. Just try to keep up with him if you do! And I am still in conversations with the great guys at JE piston trying to sort out just what we are doing on hat end. Our front fork assembly is also here now and was just what we were looking for. Now I am trying to find a San Jose fork brace since they no longer manufacture them. Anyone? Forks will be going to powder coat and then to RaceTech for the full meal deal and should return ready to go! Our thanks to Matt Wiley of RaceTech for all his help! On the actual work front we did a test fit the front end to ensure that our rotor and calipers were going to get along well. They liked each other quite a lot! Also did a test fitment of the 900 crankshaft into the 750 cases and that looks like they have also known each other for a long time. The 336 cam also arrived along with a complete gasket set from BMWNA. Also cut out the hubs to prep them for powder coat and wheel lacing. I will be talking a lot of powder coating with Lonnie Woodard from Skinny’s Specialty Restoration tonight at the monthly Utah British Bike Club meeting. We have a lot of powder coating that needs to happen before assembly can begin. Still working on ignition, carburation and some extra special machine shop work that is super top secret at this time. 3/3/2011 Things are moving along but not quite as fast as I would like. Although, I have received some rather significant support just recently from some new sources. I have been speaking with a gentleman named Craig Schmidt. Some of you may be familiar with him. He runs companies called BoxerCafe.com They specialize in fiberglass component for BMW’s. (So if any of you need nice solo seats for your R100RS’s contact him now! Or any other glass bits for that matter). He has agreed to provide us with a full fairing, seat assembly and front fender. Very nice! We have got most of our frame mocked up and are waiting to have just heard on frame braces. We have settled on using the long swing arm with the short sub-frame which gives us a very nice angle on our rear suspension. See attached photo. Color scheme has also been determined. We are going to be using Rennsport rondels with have the three colors we are going to use for the pin striping. The chassis itself will be powder coated in the deep red of the rondel. Powder coating is being provided by Skinny’s Specialty Restoration. Fairing and fiberglass components will be in pearl white with blue undertones. I have also had contact with a fellow named Ivan from Motoradd Unlimited who has been gracious enough to provide some very nice frame braces and a lightened flywheel! The number of people who have responded to my pleas for assistance has just been overwhelming. And last but not least I have been in contact with a good friend of mine who also happens to be a writer for Motorcyclist Magazine. I approached him regarding the possibility of getting an article into the magazine. It would appear from his response that it is a very real possibility. This would give all of my contributors some national exposure which would help them recover their donation costs. Very Cool! More to come… 3/1/2011 Well we are proceeding along nicely. We have received a few more commitments for parts including potential hub assemblies (hoping anyway!) and possibly a complete rolling chassis. The rolling chassis will provide all of the little bits and pieces that can add up to so much expense if purchased individually. I started pulling down the short block and so far everything looks pretty good. Also did a little soda blasting on one of the heads and it looks like they will clean up quite nicely. As soon as I have my block apart the frame and engine assembly goes to the welder to move the mounting lugs up to get more ground clearance……… We received a pallet today at the shop and boy oh boy it was a big one! Tom Kullen has been negotiating with a Mr. Luke Conner regarding a complete motorcycle which was possibly available for the project. And as it turns out not only was it available it has arrived! Shipped on Monday and arrived on Wednesday. That’s what I call service. The chassis was however not exactly rolling as the pictures will attest too. But that is not a problem in the least. It has arrived with many of the bits and pieces we will need to complete this baby. Our thanks to Luke Conner for providing us with his kind assistance! As you can see from the pictures my guys were all over this pallet when it arrived and I kiddingly teased my technician Gordy with “You should be able to have this thing back together and running by the end of the day if you get started right away”. His response was of course predictable and not to be repeated here. So this gets us to a point where we can begin to mock up the chassis and get some of our welding out of the way. We still haven’t gotten the front end straightened out yet and are hoping to find a R100RS or RT front with the Brembo brakes since the earlier ones don’t really function as actual brakes. If anyone out there has a front end they would like to donate you know who to contact… 12/20/2010 - R750 Formula 750/BEARS racebike details and the cast of characters. Recently BMW & Triumph Motorcycles was approached at the monthly Utah British Bike Club meeting by the event organizer for the Bonneville Vintage GP. He was curious as to whether we would be interested in building the 2011 raffle bike for the upcoming season. We had an immediate interest! After an store meeting we decided that we were completely on board. Thus began what will be unveiled in the following reports. We will document them as they unfold both in print and in pictures. We hope that you enjoy following the progress as much as we will in actually building this machine. The Cast of Characters; Tom Sill – Service Manager, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Jeremy Kanter – General Manager, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Tom Kullen – Event Organizer, Bonneville Vintage GP Anthony (Kiwi) Burrows, Master machinist, Ideal Machine. Technician, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Tim Nelson – Service Advisor, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Goran Muckajev – Technician, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Koleena Hinkle – Technician, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles Robert Stoney – Technician, BMW & Triumph Motorcycles The Starting Line; And they’re off! Well actually it started rather slow. Mostly phone calls and discussions. This was followed by heartfelt pleading with all of the people we came in contact with. (List of donors to follow). The results were fantastic so far and I believe things will continue that way. The Menu so far; Main frame Subframe and swingarm (subframe still on its way) Transmission Engine BMW/TRIUMPH Motorcycles of Salt Lake 215 N. Redwood Rd. North Salt Lake, UT 84054 ph 801-936-4600 | fax 801-936-4605 Visit their website at: www.bmwtriumphsaltlake.com