Image 230/365. My BMW R100RS, taken outside my home in Ashby De La Zouch, 2001.
This classic motorcycle was built in 1986 in Bayerische Motoren Werke AG Munich. The Austrians have a fierce pride about their engineering skills and, above all, being Austrian. The following short story is an uplifting tale of that level of Germanic passion…
In 2002, me and several friends went on a European motorcycle tour, starting in Dover, over to Calais, through Belgium and Luxembourg, into Germany, through Munich, Salzburg and the Austrian alps into northern Italy for a day, then back through Switzerland and France. Anyone who has been on such a tour with a bunch of male motorcyclists will know about the 14 days of man-spats, hangovers, arguments over routes, jealousy of better hotel rooms at the same price, quarrels over restaurants and the like. It’s all part of the immense fun.
My Beemer was already 16 years old by this tour and hadn’t done any serious long mileage stints in years. Somewhere on the autobahn between Munich and Salzburg, on a high-speed cruise of over 100mph – just ticking over for the RS, I suddenly had a terrifying emergency. The handlebars went into a ‘tank-slapper’, almost throwing me off the bike, the front wheel wobbling horrendously by a few inches side to side. Using the rear brake and going down through the gearbox I soon came to a safe halt. The front wheel bearings had disintegrated.
Fortunately I was in the RAC European scheme, they identified a BMW motorbike dealership some 25km away from my location. I told my companions that I would text them and catch up at the next day or two’s hotel and not to worry about me. With that, my friend Simon and I, on two bikes, limped at 20mph to the BMW bike dealership.
On arrival, two mechanics were working in the garage. The salesman / manager out front understood that it was an emergency, but regretfully said that there were no workshop bookings available for several days. At that point, one of the mechanics came out, looked at the wheel, said that they had a spare exactly the same from an identical machine they were using for parts, and that he could easily fit it in and swap the tyre in a few minutes of his own time after 5pm.
“Please, sir, just get me some beers and pay 25 Euros for the wheel, it is a bit corroded on the rim…” he said, in perfect heavily accented English. I was so grateful I could have kissed him. I walked into the nearby village, bought 24 bottles of something around six percent ABV, Teutonic and fizzy, then went to the cash machine to take out folding money for the wheel.
Immediately after 5pm, the two mechanics fell upon the bike like hyenas on a wildebeest. They loved working on ‘an old classic’. I watched them work in perfect unison, like a surgeon and an assistant, barely talking to each other as they replaced the wheel and tyre, then checked the brake discs and bearings with ease. They told me that they were brothers, both semi-professional motorcycle racers sponsored by BMW – the mechanic work was their day job; their passion was motorbike racing.
After about 25 minutes the first mechanic seemed happy with the wheel swap and asked if it was OK to road test my bike. “For sure!” I said.
He removed the heavy luggage panniers and mounted the bike, taking off from the yard onto the quiet mountain road nearby. Ten minutes passed. I was starting to become worried. Had the front wheel collapsed again, had the guy come off? A couple of minutes later I heard the unmistakable exhaust note of a BMW boxer-twin on full song, the mechanic was going through the gearbox and obviously red-lining the bike in every gear. There was a long sweeping curve in front of the garage entrance, and then I saw the mechanic flash into view, my Beemer doing at least 80 or 90 mph with the rider’s knee perilously close to the ground and the exhaust pipe on the nearside sparking off the tarmac. I’d never seen a road-legal motorcycle ridden so fast or handled so expertly. It was as if my bike was on rails around the sweeping left hander. The guy gave me a barely perceptible nod under his helmet as if to say ‘all good’.
10 minutes later, the bike was back on the garage forecourt, making that ‘tick-tick’ sound as air-cooled engines do after a good thrashing.
“There is a slight problem…” said the Austrian.
“With the wheel?” I asked.
“Nein, nein…” he said under his breath, taking off his helmet whilst pushing the bike back onto the hydraulic ramp. He pumped up the mechanism so that the cylinder heads were at his chest level. Removing the rocker covers, he then took a pair of feeler gauges and started making adjustments.
He then replaced the covers and fitted new gaskets, started the engine and produced a stethoscope from his tool box. He let the bike tick over and rev, while listening intently to each cylinder, nodding to himself in satisfaction after a few minutes.
“You had a tappet-clearance problem, causing a lag at higher revs.” He said.
“Oh, OK, is it fixed now?”
“I will ride once more for five minutes.”
Same story, high speed road test, howling past the garage entrance. On his return, the mechanic coasted back into the forecourt and killed the engine. He dismounted, fetched my luggage panniers and re-fitted them. He looked over at the beer on the bench. I handed him 30 Euros in notes. He gratefully accepted.
“Thank you, Mr Hill.” He nodded and shook my hand.
“The machine is now acceptable. Good day to you, have a great trip home.”
Acceptable?! Not half! It had never run so smoothly nor handled so well in all the years I’d owned it.
That experience remains my definition of the word ‘professionalism’.
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