Insert clever airhead based title here ....

Well, yes, tho/ough

A - The slightly inclement weather does give some small form of excuse, and I understand there was a policy that anyone arriving in a car/van had to sit in it nude whilst being pelted thru/ough the open windows with snowballs (no pics pls), and

B - To be fair our very own Mr & Mrs Deadly were indeed hardcore enough to make it there on a bike

iam heeding to the oddballs do at wem on the 22nd of feb .give the k100 hun a wee airing down the M6 the old dog likes to rev

I'm guessing you refer to http://www.oddballsmcc.co.uk/ ?

correct

i dont see the point in haveing the ht leads hanging out the side of the engine can of spoils the whole look

True enough, especially when there's a lovely path crafted for them on the rear of the head, but then I don't like the headlight. I guess any pic of someones build will always have bits we each like and bits we don't...

Obviously, that's obvious, but what's no to like about -



Via http://boxermetal.com/ & Harm van der Veen

txt @ Bottom of http://www.rbracing-rsr.com/bmwturbos.htm

Customers​

Harley Customer: "How much is it"..."Here's the money"...."Thanks it works great!"
BMW Customer: "How much does it weigh?".... "Will it void my warranty? "If I bring my bike to you, will you install it for free while I wait ?"... "I don't want to pay shipping"..."Do you have any used ones around that I can try?". "My dealer charges too much money, will you do it for less?".
Not all, but it happens often enough. Some people go through life happy and participate, others just...whatever.

Reality Check
​

This may be your hobby but it is our business and in a business sense, turbos make little sense. That we choose to do them is our choice and it has nothing to do with money. The R&D and the tooling and the testing is money that you never get back...Never! Never! Never! No one appreciates what you do and almost no one understands what is involved. We have done enough free work and R&D to pay for a mansion in Beverly Hills. It is our choice. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

We get calls from people who want to know if the exhaust they have will work with the turbo (think about it). We have people who call and tell us they will be happy with 200hp all the time (?). We have people call and tell us they are coming by for an installation...they don't ask, they just announce it. We tell them no and they tell us we are assholes. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

We have worked with a number of customers on prototypes over the years. Several have announced they were not going to pay us any money because "RB Racing" was going to get rich off the prototype. We offered any of these people to simply pay us for our time and parts and we'll let them have the business. For some reason they always decline the offer. Something about them getting their regular paycheck without any risk or investment. Every day the clock ticks on and the expenses rise. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

Over 600 BMW turbos and 1500 turbos for more than 25 platforms over the years. Thousands and thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. Computer code, flow benches, test equipment, custom software, electronic circuitry design, specialized castings, cnc and manual machinery, fixtures, specialized fabrication and welding equiment, training of employees etc etc. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

Be prepared. This is serious stuff. Know your responsibility. These aren't phony carbon fiber tank protectors. We love them and hope you do too.

People and Their Toys​

After more than 29 years of turbocharging motorcycles we have come to the conclusion that people, for the most part, will never understand what it is that goes into preparing turbocharger systems. If it is something that you are interested in we will be glad to take this 27 years of experience and thousands of hours of time and build some very nice parts. If you are not prepared to pay our price or, if you have any special conditions, simply do not call us in the first place. We have met a few people that we inadvertantly "let in the door" who suddenly forgot everthing we said and started trying to run the show.

It is not going to happen. Like the batter at the plate who gets hit by the first two pitches, we aren't going to give the pitcher a third chance. If you own your own business you will understand. If you are a 9-5 person with a serious hobby you will never understand.

<address>You meet the nicest people</address>​

<address></address><address>Built a turbo for a &#8220;friend&#8221; of a friend.. He had to go on a trip with it. He shows up late and tells you he&#8217;ll pay you when he gets back. Feeling cooperative you send him on his way. Two weeks later you get a call. He says the turbo &#8220;burned up&#8221; and he&#8217;s 2000 miles away. You airfreight him a replacement turbo. You never see him again.

</address><address> </address><address>Customer shows up to pick up his turbo and informs you he is not going to pay for it because he is now your &#8220;salesman&#8221; and you should be so ever grateful for the business he is going to bring you. You tell him the price just went up $200.00. He protests and you tell him if he opens his mouth one more time the price goes up another hundred. Six hundred dollars later beyond the original price he pays cash. You see him periodically over the next four or five years. He is now your best friend.

</address><address> </address><address>You set up a remote oil system on a race bike and the customer burns up two turbos, which you replace for free. You later find out he killed the turbos in the burnout when he never turned on the electric oil feed pump. He also runs off with an $1100.00 custom wheel you lent him for a race. He sells the bike and never pays you. Oh yeah, he worked in law enforcement.

</address><address> </address><address>You build a turbo for a guy and he up and leaves the country after giving you a deposit. 18 months later he shows up and asks for his turbo. You tell him to come in two weeks and pick up the parts. He calls constantly threatening you with all sorts of dire things. . We tell him to bring cash. He does. He then says nothing fits. Turns out he pieced together a bike out of a frame that was designed for another engine. Flea market (stolen) parts. We spend 12 hours cutting and adapting things to make it work for no charge. He goes away then comes back and says it &#8220;won&#8217;t start&#8221;. We look at his throttle bodies and they are not synched. We put light cable pressure on them and the bike starts instantly....he asks why and we tell him &#8220;the bike does not like him&#8221;. He goes away. He calls up threatening us with all sorts of dire consequences if we don&#8217;t give him something for free that he hasn&#8217;t paid for. He insults a female at our business. We tell him he can have the part for free if he disappears and never contacts us again. He agrees. We send the part. Two weeks later he calls us up and tells us he has set a speed record. We ask him if he understands what the word &#8220;never&#8221; means. He goes on a multi-year effort to tell everyone the parts we made were his design and coordinates a disinformation campaign against our business.

</address><address> </address><address>You build a turbo kit and another firm says they will buy 100 of them. You have one year of R&D and gear up to make the systems. They order one, then two, then 25...They neglect to pay you the full amount. The orders stop and there are excuses. You get a call from a fabricator you know who says &#8220;I think I have your stuff here that I&#8217;m supposed to copy&#8221;. You drive over and look. Sure enough it&#8217;s yours. You tell him to go ahead and copy it. You go lock the customer in his office and rip everything off his desk and get your check. They fail and call you up two years later saying they shouldn&#8217;t have ripped you off and now they want to work with you again. You say sure and go pick up a bike they provide. You disassemble the bike in a hundred pieces and tell them to come pick it up.

</address><address> </address><address>You work with the same customer for 15 years and build him two specialized race turbos. One deal was if the kit was sold RB Racing got &#8220;x&#8221; dollars. As long as it was raced or not sold no payment was required. Client sold the kit. We went collect. Client said the deal, as &#8221;he remembered&#8221; was if he sold &#8220;the bike&#8221; he would pay us and since he sold just the kit he wasn&#8217;t going to pay us since the bike was not sold. We increased our prices 50% that day on items he was buying. He just passed it on. We got the message and removed the other parts from a 206 mph bike that also were not paid for.

</address><address> </address><address> </address><address>Customer wanted us to do something for free which involved more than 30 days of labor (turbo related). We refused unless he agreed to pay. He paid a lawyer at least 5x what we asked for to attempt to force us to do the work for free. We never did and he got zip except being stuck with his lawyer&#8217;s fees. Much aggravation.

</address><address> </address><address>You prototype out a turbo on a new bike and give the customer a 50% discount. You call him up so he can fly in and pick it up. As soon as you put down the phone the fax activates and a four page document comes through informing you that he is not going to pay for the items as &#8220;You are going to make money selling them&#8221;. You call him back and tell him the bike is now on the street with the keys in it and you are &#8220;going home&#8221;. He paid. He also declined to pay you the $30,000.00 in development costs you incurred. Seems he really did not want to be in a money losing business.

</address><address> </address><address> </address><address>Customer who owns a motorcycle shop brings a bike by for you to look at. You agree to see if the turbo can be done. You give him a price if it turns out the parts can be made. You make the parts and tell him to pick up the bike and the parts. He now wants them installed which was not in the quote and on top of this it turns out there is no money because he doesn&#8217;t own the bike and the &#8220;owner&#8221; is out of the country. The bike has no plates. No one pays. Owner of bike shows up with a tatooed bodyguard and wants his &#8220;turbo&#8221;. You tell the owner and the tatooed bodyguard to get bent. We finally get 1/2 of the money for the parts and give them 1/2 of the parts and the bike is sold to some third party who also won&#8216;t pay the balance. Bye bye on a flatbed.

</address><address> </address><address>Customer burns up a turbo on a bike we did not build nor make the turbo for. We rebuild the turbo and put on a new fuel pump. Customer refuses to pay. He takes us to small claims court and the Judge asks him why since "he owes RB Racing money and why is he there wasting the court&#8217;s time&#8221;. Nine years later, and a $300.00 bill not paid, we gave the bike to a friend who parted it out. Thirteen years later the guy&#8217;s son shows up asking for the bike.

</address><address> </address><address>We build a turbo for a customer and offer him a 50% discount as it was a new prototype. We design the parts, the fixtures, bend 50 sets of the parts and take two sets through final finishing. Customer flies in, approves the design, then refuses to pay unless he &#8220;has the bike for a time and is completely happy&#8221;. We take the parts off the bike and it sits. He has other bikes and flies in from out of state three times, each time to inform us of his &#8220;conditions&#8221;. We had made two complete systems, and spent three months of design time and had no payment from customer. Customer then calls and offers to "loan us $10,000.00" so we can finish his system. He tells us he will send us $10,000.00, we will finish his bike, return the $10,000.00 and then he will fly in and if he is completely happy he will pay us the original estimate. We tell him to get bent. We move the business to a larger facility which costs a lot of money and ask the customer to make payment. He refuses but says he will come down and help us find a new location if we finish his bike. We tell him to get bent again. Customer flies in again and we beat 25% out of him after three hours of yelling. Time passes and three and one half years later we reveive a check representing the balance of the deal. Customer calls and asks if he had paid the amount in the first place would he have had his "turbo". We answer in the affirmative. In the meantime the turbos have become obsolete and we scrap the parts...all 50 sets. For the newer turbos we lasercut all new turbo flanges, bend new parts, make several dozen new fixtures and go through four redesigns to insure most of the parts fit various years and models. We go out and buy five BMWs to not have to deal with people like this customer. We design, finish and install new parts on the bike. We spend tens of thousands of dollars in labor, parts, and design time. We ask the customer to send us an updated registration so we can start and run the bike without risk of being towed by the police. He agrees then sends us an email saying he won't. We just go back to work. The last time we checked we thought it was our business. He finally sends in the registration months later and we're busy on other things. He could wait. We finish the bike adding $2,000.00 worth of the latest upgrades, put the bike on trailer just before we had to leave for Bonneville, and ship it to him, leaving one hose disconnected and instructions on how to connect it. He says he'll send us the $2,000.00. He then takes the bike to a shop who knows nothing about the bike and asks them to make the bike run. They call us and we ask them if they are getting paid for working on the bike which they reply in the affirmative. We tell them as soon as we get our $2,000.00 that the honorable gentleman promised we'd be glad to give advice. We never hear from them nor do we get the $2,000.00. At least he is out of our hair.

</address><address> </address><address> </address><address>A customer says he&#8217;s going to build his own turbo and wants us to order him a turbo. He chooses the wrong one. We order it anyway. One year later he can&#8217;t get it done by conning his &#8220;friend&#8221; to do the work for free so he asks it to build it &#8220;his way&#8221;. We do. He then sees our design and wants it changed to "our way". We did. He also took it upon himself to take down the license plate numbers of three out of state bikes we had in our shop. He threw a fit when he saw we were working on bikes like his but not his exclusively. He tracked these people down and told them RB Racing was tearing up their bikes doing wheelies and loaning them to customers (the bikes were never operated) for the sole purpose of spite. The people came in unannounced and pulled their bikes and tried to sue us for not finishing their bikes even though they had not paid. They also wanted additional work done for free and even told us they would take our fixtures back to their state and build our parts for us. They announced they were going to &#8220;own&#8221; our business.They got nothing from us. We were out eight weeks labor and fabrication. We let the original customer ride his bike around the block and then disabled it as he was moving to Tennessee. He was amazed how &#8220;perfect&#8221; it was. We told him he could have the missing parts when he owned up to what he had done and pay for any losses we had. He was a coward and did nothing. He sold the bike to a friend of ours who paid us for the missing parts, getting a $17,000.00 motorcycle for $6,000.00.The bike ran 210 mph on it&#8217;s first pass at Maxton. The seller was there to see &#8220;his Bike&#8221;. Mike Chestnut.

</address><address> </address><address>Customer brings us a bike but neglects to pay the agreed amount. He attempts to sue us to do the work without paying the amount we agreed on. We spend several thousand dollars for an attorney and the customer gets nothing and is charged a large cancellation fee.

</address><address> </address><address>Customer does not pay us for a turbocharger job but wants to get his bike. We show up on a Saturday and the customer is there with a police car. We ask the police what the deal was and they said the guy wanted to pick up his bike but he was afraid we might harm him. We show the police the invoice that was not paid and the Police go after the guy for calling in a false report. We let the guy take the bike anyway having him sign a statement he was to send us &#8220;X&#8221; dollars per month. The Police witnessed the statement. We got one money order via express mail from the guy for $25.00. The guy lost job after job and we simply wrote the whole affair off.

</address><address> </address><address>We built a Turbo for a customer who gave us a $1,200 deposit on a $5,000.00 item. He sold the pink to a third party for $7,000.00 who came to pick up &#8220;his turbo&#8221; that we had finished. We let him drive it around as we had already dealt with the customer and then we took the bike back for safekeeping. The third party then told us the bike was being sold to some rich fool for $18,000.00 and would we deliver it. Not unless we got paid. The third party decided to take the bike back stock. We removed the turbo parts. He could not win &#8220;big&#8221; so he did not want to pay us the balance. We decided to also take back some parts from him that he had set numerous records with that were not paid for. He came back years later and asked what it would take to get the parts back. We showed him the box and the parts and quoted him $4,500.00. He said that was &#8220;about what he thought&#8221;. We haven&#8217;t seen him since.

</address><address> </address><address>You build a BMW turbo for a customer that requires the customer do some fabrication. He sends you a picture with the oil drain line looped up in a giant &#8220;U&#8221; plus other issues that shows he absolutely has no clue. He then wants you to buy his old bike that had been sitting dead for 5 years plus get his money back. We offer to install the kit if he brings us the bike. He doesn't. Get real.

</address><address> </address><address>A few out of 1500+ turbo systems but it&#8217;s enough.
_______________________________________________

</address><address> </address><address>For these and a dozen other reasons you are not getting your bike in our shop. We will sell you the parts but we no longer, after 30 years of this, care about the dirty details of your life, nor do we care about your motives. You may be too weird for us. You may be just fine. Our parts are good and you can order them if you have the money. You can get them right away. They are in stock. They are the best. We are not your &#8220;Bro&#8221; and you have to realize it&#8217;s your show. We limit our involvement to people we have known for 15-20 years or more. We are not going to look over our shoulders to see if that knife you are eating your steak with is going to end up in our back. We lead. The &#8220;follow me&#8221; motto of the US Army Officer assumes with some certainty his men will follow. We&#8217;ve been there and know in that situation the mission will be done. We do not know if you will follow and we assume, for safety and peace of mind that you will not.

</address><address> </address><address>A longterm friend, a vet, needed help to go fast. We spend tens of thousands of dollars on his project and he never asks for anything. Nor do we. No questions. Everyone going the same direction.

</address><address> </address><address>Grow up. You are on your own journey. We have ours and we are on our path alone, have our own projects, and do not need company. Install the parts yourself if you are competent or pay a shop to do so.

</address><address> </address><address>If this is not acceptable or you do not understand our position there are others out there who will happily take your money. You can drag them along for the ride.

</address><address> </address><address>Over the years we gave a lot of people enough rope and treated them well. There seems to be about one idiot per year who shows up full of bubbling enthusiasm and a hidden agenda. For us it is a business and we limit our enthusiasm to the manufacture of the parts and to our pursuit of excellence in design and function. Best keep your agenda and rope for others, not us.

</address><address> </address><address>Nothing personal. Just business.</address>​

http://www.sovietsteeds.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=24408

Somewhere in http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=163017

http://1978r100rs-airhead.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/bmw-1977-r1007-for-rolling-concours.html


http://1978r100rs-airhead.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/my-1977-r1007.html

http://1978r100rs-airhead.blogspot.co.uk/2012/02/horns-of-bmw-dilemma-bmw-semi-off-road.html

There's a short story in this somewhere...

http://www.bskspeedworks.co.uk/

http://advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=844188&page=10

http://flatracer.com/#/bmw-airhead-faq/4533419626

http://www.horizonsunlimited.com/hubb/bmw-tech/stuck-addis-need-help-broken-54505

http://micapeak.com/bmw/gs/gs_para.html

http://www.x189player.com/r60cafe/index.php?category=1