Show off your BMW "Barn Finds"

Found anywhere is acceptable : in a barn, garage, ditch, or field

Maybe someone has already done this?....if so , maybe it is buried......

I have a love for "Beemer Archeology" (sp?).
Amazing what teasures some folks will let deteriorate under their noses. Show us what you've found and if you're not too embarrassed...what you paid for it..........


I'll start here............


BMW 1973 R75/5 Short Wheel Base 1/2 a Toaster
This is the "bright" side. Other side is missing the engine top end. Actually had some hope when I heard the description over the phone. Thought it might be a restoration possibility. Hope was dashed after I saw it. After driving 300 miles over to L.V. to pick it up.

A P.O. had really screwed around with a lot of things. The speedometer had been cracked open and he scratched each "dummy light" function next to each light on the dial face. ( what a great idea!) Frame had stuff welded to it and holes drilled in it. All the pretty aluminum signal housings had been damaged and the front ones had holes drilled in them for the fairing supports. Had a Suzuki tail light and some odd Asian throttle control grafted on. But the headlight bucket was nice, the only part on the bike that was worth much.



A BMW with "mini ape hangers" (ya gotta be kidd'in me) , an overstuffed shag carpet (or towel) seat cover. I paid $350.00 dollars for this and that was about $300.00 more than it was worth. Was able to sell off the small salvageable bits to make up my purchase price and a made a couple hundred dollars to cover my travel costs.

All in all this was an exercise in futility.






The "dark" side. Dig that trailer hitch, mounted to the fender with a big ugly chunk of steel run up under the fender to reinforce it. The left side muffler / header was twisted in a knot from a crash. Appeared that the left jug was ripped off in the wreck. The right jug /top end was actually in pretty good shape and went to a new home.

Basically a pile of junk.

Some bikes were just meant to be donor-bikes....

My "find", for which I paid $500:



eventually turned into this:


The bike was actually quite good underneath all the crud... It was a fun project which I would do over in a heartbeat! More details (lots!) can be found in the link in my sigline below, fwiw.....

77 R100/7 $800... And it runs pretty good...

Wow, Nice find & cheap! :eek1




bpeckm.....I bet she'll lift the front wheel?

As seen in my signature;

My R90 before (yes, it's in there if you look closely):



..and after:




My R75 before (it's actually not in this picture, but this is the pile of junk I pulled it out of):



and after:

This was in the wood shed for 12 years. It had 2677 miles on it when Charlie (background) sold it to me. It is a 1986 BMW K-75T

Found in national bike classifieds mag in Oz - fully rebuilt from big ends up, what look like new Krauser 4-valve heads; even came with all the old parts (pistons, bearing shells, pushrods, heads etc) replaced during the rebuild. Did 4 hours in a gyrocopter, then removed and left in shed for 4 years. Added fuel, battery and a few other bits and away it went!
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Damn!!!!

Well heres mine!

I picked up this 82-RS offa CraigsList last year, fresh out of 6 or 7 years of barn storage. It even had the old gas in the tank! How wonderful!



A couple of days of cleaning....



A couple of weeks of mechanical torture and wallet busting....




Whew... That was expensive!! :huh



And there she is a week or two before I left for the East Coast and Canada.



The last addition was a pair of my new newly designed side braces and that pretty much finished the project. It's one of the best handling Airheads that I've ever owned so I'll be keeping it for a while. Maybe...



I successfully rode the bike from Nor Cal through the Rockies and to the BMWMOA Nationals in Tennessee before hitting Newport News, Northern W. Va. for the BMWRA Nationals, Ontario Canada, Cleveland, Chicago, all over Nebraska, the Tetons, Yellowstone, Wyoming and a few other states, before coming home.

Be careful... Barn bikes are neat to find but it's not the cheapest way to get a nice bike and I can prove it!

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Yeah but That aint a total loss. I'm looking at at least $1000 in parts on the hoof and maybe more! Toaster tank, rear end, fork assy, triple clamps... What are ya... Lazy?

Heck... A little rubbing and some paint and you gotta nice bike!!

Oops... WHat happened to that front fender? Oh.. and the tail light..... and... Never mind...!

1977 R80/7...lying in a trailer park, under a bush, for years. Looked like it had been given a once-over with matt black, and had the twin headlights added, for what I presumed was an attempt at a rat bike......after a fluid drain and refresh, and a carb strip, fired up no trouble.

Nice!!

here's the 'after' version....

I miss this bike a lot, which is why I'm building another one...

This is an R90S I purchased a few months ago. It came to NZ about 20 years ago,, and was originally from Florida. I saw the bike when it first arrived in NZ and it was immaculate. I hadn't seen it since, until I was given the opportunity to buy it due to the owner's marriage falling apart. In spite of it's current condition, evidence of it's former glory remain with the fork brace, Koni shocks, Lesters and Corbin. I'm not a personal fan of Lesters, but some folk are. The price was less than US$2000.






The bike looks like it was washed with sandpaper. The Corbin was "repaired" with 100mph tape. fortunately it came with a reasonable "S" fairing and good panniers. According to the former owner, it just needs the wiring tidied up and it will be a good runner. I'm not quite so optimistic . . .

Mine as I found her :)

Unfortunately my luck in finding salvagable machines has been poor.
Most bikes I've found have been beyond hope and not worth the cost to restore. After scrounging parts from a number of different bikes I began a rat bike build.......





Another one

A gal contacted me through an ad I ran and had an old BMW in her yard. She was tired of mowing around it and wanted it to go away. She told me she had bought the bike as a project for a boy friend a couple years previous. He eventually peeled on her and she kept the bike. She had paid $100.00 for it and just wanted to get at least part of her money back. She said she'd take $50.00 but I told her I'd give her $100.00 sight unseen, figuring any old BMW has got to have $100.00 worth of parts on it. I drove over 300 miles to pick up my unseen "new" find.

As found:




Big ol' tank had a built in garbage can on top.........





I knew little about after market tanks and had never seen one like this. After hauling it home I looked it over and found no dents or rust to speak of. The bike sat out with no fuel cap and had leaves in the tank. I flushed it and amazingly it was pretty clean inside. After some fuel tank research I realized what I had stumbled upon.

I pulled the tank, shocks and a couple of parts off and sold it to a fella needing a chassis. We all were happy.

I found a used original tool box lid, nos fuel cap. A little paint work and it came out OK.








It went to the new owner as an organ donor in this mode. Pretty rough. This was after an intense degreasing job.

Hardly a barn find but mine was a bit sad





Shes a bit sharper now but still a work in progress.

Paris Hilton????

That is awesome.