Speed is what the K1100RS likes, thousands of miles of it.
Steve Engelbrecht, MotorWorld Online K1100RS Review

My K1100RS Page

(Both images are clickable for a larger version. The scanner I used was a little crappy, but I will probably re-scan them later.)

This is the page for my K1100RS. It may actually turn out to be a kind of short page because I may be trading the K1100RS for a K100LT. (I know, it seems like going backwards, but there is a story. Which I will tell on this page. Be patient.)

In the fall of 1999 I decided that I needed a new bike. My '82 R100RS was getting a little old for the long distance riding that I wanted to do and was a little unreliable (somewhat due to the modifications I have made to it - see the R100RS page.) I wasn't sure what kind of bike I wanted to get. I thought another BMW wouldn't be a bad choice, but which one? I was on kind of a restrictive budget, so I knew it would have to be used, but that's not usually an issue for me.

Then in early winter I was involved in a minor car accident (my car was hit by a city bus.) Due to the age of my car and the amount of repairs that would be required to fix it, they estimated the damage at $3600. Imagine my surprise. And they didn't total the car. Since the car was still completely drivable and I don't care what it looks like, I just took the money and put it in the bike fund. Talk about a windfall.

So, what bike? I had pretty much narrowed it down to either a K1100RS or an R1100RS when along came Eddie James with a sweet deal. He would sell me his 1993 K1100RS that he had run three Ironbutt Rallies on. This bike is fully kitted for Long Distance riding, with an auxiliary fuel tank, a big huge driving light and a Parabellum windshield (kind of ugly, but functional.) He offered it to me at a price I could hardly refuse.

And then the fun began.

After I had decided that I probably wanted the bike, Eddie wasn't sure that he wanted to sell it. He was more attached to it than he realized. So he hemmed and hawed a bit. After both he and I wrote various emails to a mutual friend about it (Airyn Darling) he decided that he could sell it and I decided I would buy it, if I liked it after a test drive.

So finally, in May of 2000 I took a drive with Eddie and several other people to collect some IBET Rally locations. I rode the K1100RS for the trip and decided in the end that I really liked the bike and wanted to buy it. So I did.

I rode it around all June and enjoyed the hell out of it. The K1100RS is one hell of a nice bike. But of course I can't leave well enough alone. I had to put some bar-backs on it to raise the handle bars. That really improved the riding position for me but made the bars much buzzier. So I did the modification to stiffen them up. That helped a bit. I also bought a ChatterBox CB Radio for it. The Chatterbox is not the best choice, as I found out after I started using it. It works, mostly, but has some design flaws. It did some mods on it and made it a little better. The speakers and mic that come with it are pretty good though. I may upgrade the radio when I get the K100LT.

Then near the end of June, I washed it.

"So what?" you say. Well, apparently this bike is hydrophobic. If you wash it, it breaks. Big time. Eddie claims that in the six years that he owned it, he never washed it.

On June 29th, (a week before the Minnesota 2000,) I sent a message to the Internet BMW Riders mailing list. The driveshaft had broken. I fixed that up and away we go.

After the Minnesota 2000, I washed it again. (What can I say? It was covered in Canadian bugs.) It promptly broke again. (Well, okay. It didn't actually break then, but I discovered the problem after I washed it.)

The 'buttons' that hold the floating disks for the brakes to the carriers had worn so badly that it scared me to look at them. They looked like one more hard braking application and the disks would have spun on the carriers. So I stopped riding it until I could get the parts to fix it. After spending $115 at Wolf BMW, I had all new buttons, washers and E-clips to put on. Yah-hoo. (Not to be confused with Yahoo.)

After that, the fact that the steering head bearings were badly notched finally bothered me enough to fix them. $60 at Moon Motors for new bearings and one afternoon later and it's like a new machine.

As you can tell, this bike needs some work. It's got almost 100,000 hard miles on it. Eddie has had all the standard maintenance done, but there are a few things it still needs. The bearings that attach the final drive to the swingarm need replacing. (I noticed this when I was doing the driveshaft.) The swingarm bearings probably need replacing. Both rims are bent. (Big surprise on a K bike.)

As part of the deal, Eddie stipulated that he might want to use this bike to run the 2001 Ironbutt Rally. I told him I didn't have any problem with that.

Now, in January of 2001, Eddie offered to trade me a 1991 K100LT that he has for the K1100RS. This way he gets his baby back for the Ironbutt and I don't lose my bike for a large chunk of the riding season. The LT was damaged in an accident during the 1999 Buttlite (all cosmetic) and as part of the deal I can choose the color that it will be painted. Right now I am leaning towards the Mandarin Yellow-Orange that the R1150GS comes in. LOUD!

I am pretty sure that I am going to take this trade. I'll update this page (and probably start a new K100LT page,) later when it happens.

But I am also pretty sure that I will end up with another K1100RS sometime. I really like the way the K-RS looks and the way it motors down the road. As I tell people, my R100RS will run at 85 all day, but it's a lot of work to do it. The K1100RS runs at 85 and says "Is that all the faster you want to go? COME ON!"

Well, the deal that Eddie had tried to set up fell through, so I still have this bike. That's okay. Every time I ride it I like it more.

Oct 2001 I just got done putting new bearings in the swingarm and the final drive pivots. I doesn't seemed to have helped the handling much, but I'm sure it can't hurt. This winter I'm going to send the wheels in to have them straightend. That should help a lot. The front is really bent and the back has a pretty good hop in it.

This is an inspirational message that Mr. James added to the windscreen. You probably cant' read it. It says "Far away is far away ---- Only if you don't go..."

Copyright 2001- Timothy W. Foreman - timf@anansi-web.com

Last updated: 11 November, 2001