Some new additions to the garage.

[Gone in 60]

I miss that little rock to the side when I rapped the throttle on my R1200R. Sort of like watching the hood scoop dance around on the hood of my old Ram-Air.

We had that R1200C on display at the Petersen when we had the travelling James Bond exhibit. I remember lots of people looking at it, saying "When did James Bond ever ride a motorcycle like that?" When you see that heavy looking bike on a display stand, without the context of the movie scene, it's a little hard to picture. The backdrop behind the bike was a still shot of it in mid-air over the helicopter.

[DutchRutter]

My dad always thought it was an interesting bike before it was movie famous. He is almost as quirky as the bike is. It is quite heavy, and with the long tank I'm not sure how well it would handle if pushed very hard. They are also electronically governed around 107mph from what I've discovered.

I did not end up getting a startup video of it yesterday. We were trying to get the ABS warning lights to turn off so had to pull the fuel tank. Also, we could not get the hydraulic clutch reservoir to stop leaking so we ordered up a new pair of reservoir gaskets for it. Hopefully, that will be the end of the leaks. As for the ABS warning lights, we'll try going through a manual reset process I found on chromeheads.org. I was very astonished at all the stuff crammed under that fuel tank and was even more shocked to find out that it has a small belt driven car sized alternator for charging.





Here's hoping we can get it road worthy before the weather gets too wet.

[Gone in 60]

How did it go trying to get the ABS to behave? That's a feature of BMWs that is often a very sore spot.

[DutchRutter]

It didn't go too well yet. At first we thought the system would reset itself once we replaced the ruptured line and bleed them. But it didn't. So we figured that we should check the relays since the horn is also not functioning. All the fuses and relays looked good and tested good. So now we'll be following this "how to" which is grounding some specific pins.

http://www.chromeheads.org/discus/messag...1320105370

According to people on that site, the ABS runs a check at every startup and is very temperamental. A low voltage situation can bug out the ABS controller and need a manual reset etc. Plus to take it to a dealership, would probably cost a pretty penny, just for them to hook up a scanner and reset it. Hopefully, this "manual reset" will fix that up. Even with them in a trouble mode the brakes work so it could be operated as is, but we'd prefer to have every factory system functional. And of course, not having some red lights flashing at you.

[Gone in 60]

Good luck! On my BMW, whose ABS system would be "next generation' compared to the R1200C, loss of ABS also meant loss of the brake light. Hopefully your bike has a mechanical rear brake light switch, and that the ABS does not affect other functions on the bike.

[DutchRutter]

Thats a good point Gone. I don't think we checked if the brake light is working or not. Everything else seems to be alright so far. Well, except for the horn. From what I understand, this should have their ABS2 system. I really have no idea what that means tbh. At 15k miles I'd hope it's possible to save it. But I'm betting some rolled off the assembly line with flashing ABS lights

[Gone in 60]

Check for a normal, mechanical brake light switch on the rear brake pedal like any regular bike would have. On my '07 BMW, the brake light function was handled by the ABS module, rather than a mechanical switch. So, when the ABS went bad, the brake light was on solid, making it useless.

I've heard the term "BMW Fizzy ABS Brakes" which was an earlier generation than mine, and I understood them to be very troublesome if neglected for a long period of time.

[DutchRutter]

Got an update on the R1200c. Yesterday we bleed the ABS pumps themselves, got some air and quite a bit of gunk out of them. Changed the leaking clutch reservoir rubber gasket/boot, which took care of the seeping DOT4. Put it back together and got it above 3mph, and smooth as can be, the ABS ran its test and the lights turned off. So that is a big win for us.

I ended up taking the shadow over there for its maiden voyage and so my Dad could ride it. He thoroughly enjoyed it. He did say that he would have to swap the V&H mufflers out for some quieter ones. I also ended up lowering the idle speed (probably just a touch too low now).

Now the next tasks to tackle:
On the BMW, the horn still does not work. we pulled the horn, and plugged our tester into the small sockets, key on, and button pressed, nothing. We pulled the relay and jumped from its 3 pin to the 5pin, turned the key on and horn was blaring. Checked the 1 to 2 pin, and get 12v with key on and button pressed, and it goes off without the button pressed. swapped relay with a known good one. no change. So we are REALLY confused about this now. Anyone have any ideas here?

As for the Shadow, once I got home, I noticed the headlight was really dim. So I pulled the headlight and found the H4 socket had got warm and melted. I'm thinking just some high resistance in the plug so I'll get that changed for a better socket and a better bulb.

The two bikes do look pretty good together.

[Lord Popgun]

Are you SURE the known relay is good? Put 12v (and ground) on the coil and ohm out the contacts for continuity. At work we see even new ones not work sometimes.

Might be a not good connection? Check the connectors. Make sure the pins are locked in and not pushed or anything.

For now thats all I got.

[DutchRutter]

Are you SURE the known relay is good? Put 12v (and ground) on the coil and ohm out the contacts for continuity. At work we see even new ones not work sometimes.

Might be a not good connection? Check the connectors. Make sure the pins are locked in and not pushed or anything.

For now thats all I got.

Thanks Lord,

We swapped the horn relay with the lighting relay as the lights are all working. Both relays are the same P/N. Still no difference. You do make a good point about the contacts in the relay box. They visually looked intact, but I kind of thought they looked a little low in the plug. So it very well could be that when plugging in the relay, it presses the connectors out of the bottom. We'll pull the tank back off next weekend and pull the relay box just to make sure.