Vintage BMW Motorcycle Owners

I have to pull a crank on a /2. However, I am NOT rebuilding the engine, As this was done recently. Even the slingers are clean.

Given that, some questions:

1. If you want to pull the crank is there any reason to pull the camshaft? Logically, I can’t see why, but the manuals only describe a complete strip down.

2. When reinstalling the crank, must the whole case be heated, or just the rear of the housing? The latter seems logical, but the various manuals only describe a complete strip down and again, heating the entire case.

Hi there,
I recommend working according to the manufacturer's instructions, as you will not be able in my humble opinion to pull the crankshaft without removing the camshaft, which is in the way of the crankshaft and will interfere when trying to extract it.

As for the heating before assembly - yes, it is necessary to heat the whole housing. And it's also easy and there's nothing to shy away from. I have disassembled and reassembled an engine twice already if not more. One time I was waiting for my wife to go out in the evening with her friends, and I did it in our baking oven and the second time I just bought a cheap hotplate and heated the housing on it. You will not succeed in local / spot heating attempts, even if you have a strong burner.

Good luck!

Edit: The point is that you need to achieve equal heating of the case and this can only be achieved with general and not spot heating. This is an aluminum alloy that dissipates heat well, and spot heating - for example with a burner - will cause the heat to "escape" by spreading throughout the case. You will also have more control over the temperatures required to perform the engine body work when using a hotplate or an oven.

I’m not concerned about it. I’ve done it before as well. However, it continually boggles my mind that BMW thought it was a good idea to do an engine rebuild every 25k miles, just to “ change the oil filter”.

… with no work around. Everything must be disassembled

These engines, of course we’re designed in the early 1950s, when people were using the bikes for commuting and daily life and could easily rack up a lot of miles. This makes it seem especially I’ll conceived.

But I digress…