Hello everyone, I bought this bike in the early 90's. It was cheap because it wouldn't start. I'm terribly dumb so I took it to the local BMW dealership to get it going. They called me after a couple of weeks and told me to come and get it. They couldnt get it going either. (!). I bought a workshop manual and started to learn how it worked. It can't be that hard, half a volkswagen. If it has air, fuel and spark, it HAS to start, no? Read up on setting the ignition timing. Adjusted the points by removing the rubber grommet on the engine fly-wheel side. Still wouldn't fire. So I went back a step and figured, "If I rotate the engine manually and jam a stick in the sparkplug hole, that will show top dead centre" Set the points again and away she went. The timing marks stamped into the fly-wheel bore no correspondence to the truth. So I just put some paint on the fly-wheel where I thought the spark should fire and left it like that for years. Much later, a BMW air-head whisperer told me what the story was. Apparently, someone had removed the gearbox at some point and replaced the fly-wheel in the wrong position. (Later models had a key-way to prevent this, apparently) He said that the dealership probably used a strobe-gun to set the points and when that didnt work, they just gave up. Anyway, she's done 399,000 kilometres since then and I've never had a problem. (apart from the fact that the brakes are shit-house, it handles terribly and has less performance than my 250cc Honda) But, I love it and hope to keep it until I'm too old to ride. (Which probably won't be long lol) P.S. she now has electronic sparks. Thank you!
