Help with Inherited Bikes

[jjennings]

One very important item would be to clean out the oil slingers. These engines do not have any oil filter. Unfortunately you must completely disassemble the entire engine to clean the oil slingers. This would only be needed on the R60.

[Skylinechili]

Thanks to all that posted! All of this is very helpful information and I very much appreciate. I may reach out to a few with parts questions as I progress. Wish me luck!

[john.b.watts]

Very sorry for your loss. This sounds like something I would do for (to?) my kid for sure.

If you're comfortable with mechanical things, have a decent shop with a lift, and get that Barrington book (highly recommended) as a guide for the R60 you will be fine. Very cool bikes BTW and I am partial to the older iron of course. But Brian Bosworth had a K1 and it looked good on him.

[Andrewbaron78]

I am in the final stages of rebuilding the motor on my 1964 R69S. Like yours, this bike was my dad's and I'm lucky he's still alive to mock me as I go through and deal with the previous owner's shoddy work. Sorry for your loss. JJenkins is correct to bring up the oil slingers, which you may need to replace depending on the mileage of the bike. I pulled mine apart at 46,000 miles and they were pretty full. As he mentioned, this entails a full engine rebuild, but that has been a fun process and one of the hardest educations of my life. The Barrington manual, combined with the unreal expertise of people on this thread, are the two best information sources I've found in the years since I started my project. Max BMW on the east coast is also a great resource for parts diagrams and parts. Best of luck!

[Flx48]

Well if you didn't know before he passed, you do now; you had One Cool Dad-
I've said this in the past for similar circumstances, and think it deserves repeating; whether just wrenching on the bike, or out riding it, what a wonderful way to enjoy being with your Dad's memory.

It looks like he knew and understood the bike; as we can see the oil sump extension, later petcock, coffee can light retrofitted for the cobra handle on the Steib, (500 or 501? check the data plate) turn signals, the bling bars on the front/rear lights; guessing it's been stored the last 10-20 years?

You haven't really laid out your goals, and perhaps you haven't fully defined them yet; and you also haven't mentioned if you are a rider, or maybe intending on becoming a rider?

If you're after seeing it running again and not a whole lot more, Don's suggestions in an earlier post are the simple way to go, the way I and many of us here would approach it.

Hearing it run, you may get pumped up to then decide (if you hadn't decided from the outset) on wanting a more thorough, or holistic, approach to putting the bike back into serious, sound, long term use, and then a broader game plan may be warranted.

Servicing, as in bringing an unknown (to you) bike to a certain level of reliability and safety, so one has a benchmark for knowing the overall soundness.
That's two categories, chassis and drivetrain.
Chassis would be things like new tires/rubber tubes, checking spoke tightness/wheel trueness, looking at all the bearings, (wheels/swingarms/steering) to clean/grease/adjust/or replace, ditto for brakes, checking soundness of/or replacing the wiring harnesses/cables/rubber bits/battery.
Drivetrain would be looking at the individual units; engine/trans/driveshaft/final drive, and deciding how deep you want to/have to go.
Replacing seals in each unit would give a close look at everything from the outside without going too far in, if at that point you hadn't yet decided to dive deep and check the engine slingers and the internal bearings in all units.
And checking out the soundness of the magneto and generator systems, and the top end, and...

Anyway, the sale of the other bikes would certainly finance such a heavy duty servicing, whether hiring it out (there are a number of known capable Earles fork wrenches available) or taking the time to do it yourself. (or some combo of both)

Enjoy yourself, enjoy your memories.

Best-
George

[Skylinechili]

George,
I would like to thank you for your detailed response. My father was very cool and a unique man. He tought me a lot and wish he was here to go through the bike with me. I'm still in the process of inventory, he kept many new spare parts. Based on what I already have and cost will determine how deep I dive in to restoration. I plan to ride and enjoy the bike with my two sons. Many directions on how to proceed as you have mentioned. The bike ran the last I remembered and may not need much to get the motor running. The Steib is marked S500. Picture of the plate attached as well. I'll keep you posted as I proceed and you may see me post questions time and again. Thanks again!