BMW K100 Full Cafe Racer Build

hit it don't hit it don't hit it don't hit it those of you that might have been following along will probably notice that this build starts right after literally right after finishing my cb500 build Aaron and the kids were still on holidays but I had to come home a little bit early because of work and as I do scrolling Facebook Marketplace I found this 86 BMW k 100 and no surprise it didn't run so the first job after ripping off all the cowls was of course to get it to run so I messaged Aaron about this bike and said this would be an amazing one for Cohen and I to build my oldest son but I didn't think she would actually say yes more than anything it was me just testing the waters and she couldn't have been more excited now full disclosure I was that guy and I messaged the owner on Facebook Marketplace and made him an offer not a very impressive one but I still made him an offer and he accepted it and that kind of came in right at the same time as Aaron saying you know what you should buy this bike and build it it'd be a good thing for you and Cohen to do the initial idea was to buy this as a flip I really love the idea of a k00 and having a fuel injected motorcycle however I didn't know how much I would actually fall in love with with this bike so I will say that part of me being able to get this was convincing Aaron that it was a bike that we were going to turn around and sell this is now getting into a few months later I had diagnosed and figured out what the problem with the bike was off camera which really was just it needed new coil packs I I did replace lots of different things on this bike cuz it needed it uh one of the biggest things on k100s that a lot of people have issues with right off the bat are the fuel pump pumps the fuel pumps do sit in the gas tank and what happens a lot of the time is they get gummed up and the I guess the boot that holds the fuel pump in place does start to break down and really gum up so that was one of the first things I did and the bike actually came with a ton of extra parts and that was one of them you'll also notice in this shot how maybe crispy and different these wires look going to the fuel injectors I may have set the bike on fire at one point first job for Co and I really was just to get the bike down to a rolling chassis one thing I've learned about building cafe racers is you have to strip it down get all the extra stuff off which is I mean the point of a cafe eraser but get it stripped down as much as possible so you can really get the visuals of what the motorcycle will look like and plan around that exting to note is the first half of this video really is the version one of this motorcycle build and you'll see why as you go through it maybe you've actually watched some of the other videos on my channel so you know that I've maybe already set out some sneak peeks of what it looks like in more of the final version but you'll see more towards the end of this video Once the first version is done what it kind of evolved into more or less in the second season of riding the bike this bike for me from a wiring standpoint was definitely definitely something that was overwhelming at the beginning and you can see why just by some of these shots and just how much wiring is actually put into a K100 I mean this thing had heated grips it had a stereo there's so much extra stuff and of course all that was deleted in this build I will say I do regret deleting the heat of grips maybe that's something I would add one day uh it is mid November here in Alberta in uh 2023 and most of my friends are still riding which I stupidly winterized this bike and all the others thinking the riding season was over if you are watching this video with inspiration of building a k00 yourself or really any other Cafe Racer I really really really cannot advise enough uh on the importance of saving every single part that comes off the bike until it is totally done and and you might think well I don't need the fairings I don't need other pieces that are you know not as integral to the bike but I actually found in some cases that on the fairings I had mounting parts that I needed for the frame and other bolts that I had to you know Salvage from other areas of the bike that ended up coming in handy throughout this build so definitely do that and um also uh find someone with a 3D printer cuz there's a lot of really cool parts these are just little covers that I 3D printed in order to make sure nothing fell into the motor as I was working and cleaning it a majority of this bike after disassembly was cleaning and painting uh there wasn't a lot of rebuilding of a lot of things I mean I'll show you some of the stuff as we go through the video but definitely definitely make sure that uh you know you're taking the time to clean and knowing that you're going to have a lot of time doing that to get to the point of uh having motorcycle that doesn't look like it was you know parked for 15 years the other thing that was really interesting to me was learning how to deal with a water cooled motorcycle engine this was new to me definitely and it wasn't I I guess hard to do uh I I definitely made some mistakes and had to refill the radiator at least three times throughout this process um not all that that you'll see just cuz some of it I didn't film but definitely there were some things in this that as I went through I I kind of learned along the way and um that might have been one of the reasons why I've struggled to put this video out and other ones like this too I mean whenever I do a video on a motorcycle build I really struggle to you know share as much content on it as maybe others do and a lot of it just has to do with my background this is me learning along the way so hopefully you're doing the same and if you see me doing something that you know you have a better suggestion for or you know you think other people would benefit from knowing and you know not uh hearing my version of it definitely definitely make sure to share that in the comments uh now you're probably wondering why are they struggle busing so hard with this bike getting it down the ramp and yes there's snow on the ground but there's also no brakes so I quite literally disconnected all the brakes to be able to do this and uh the the way I slowed it down like you just saw was I slid it into [Music] first you'll also notice that the bike is in that rolling chassis configuration that I talked about uh so I can get the geometry just the way I wanted it and the reason that we're loading it up is uh I'm actually taking it to my buddy Chris to help out with the welding and yes I tend to attract people named Chris in my life and uh uh yeah so this this was Us loading it up to take it to Chris to get his help redoing the rear of the frame which I'll show you and as well balance out the the gas tank which I'll talk about here as well it was a few weeks before Chris got to the welding on the frame so I'll show you some of that a little bit later on in this video but as it were we had some time in our hands so we just kept going on cleaning and disassembling a lot of the parts of the motorcycle now the wiring here it it is not what it would normally look like on a K100 and gentlemen that own the bike before I guess the guy that I bought the bike off of uh did have some additions like I said you know he had a stereo in the bike and some heated grips and a couple other things that uh made it more custom we'll say for him but uh definitely added some uh challenge to some of the wiring just because you know we had to make sure that we weren't cutting the wrong wire and I'll be honest after a certain point of trying to be careful with what I was doing on this I I don't want to say I gave up but I definitely wasn't maybe as cautious and and that did cost me a little bit in the end uh big tip make sure you leave lots of room at the end of connectors whenever you're snipping wires don't try and get the long wires out and cut too close to connectors because if you have have to splice anything back in it can make it quite challenging so uh really what I need to get out of here is the starter relay and some of the uh devices and and other modules that this bike uses to control you know the fans on the radiator and some of the other controls for the uh for the ignition system while I was doing that Co and started ripping apart the brakes and this was well these were probably brakes that hadn't seen much love for long time so you could imagine how seized they were and he definitely definitely was cautious about taking them apart but definitely uh was running into some issues so soaked everything down a little bit and went about it a little bit more aggressively we'll say and uh ended up getting them all disassembled and uh started to clean everything up now here's a tip try using an air hose to blow out the cylinder when you're rebuilding brakes just make sure it's not facing [Music] you oh there it goes you know what's going to fix that that work [Applause] [Music] though H that yeah it's over there in between the highlight of this build for me for sure is just the just the sheer amount of time that I got to spend with my oldest son in working on it and just the I guess the relationship that That Grew From that uh I find as a parent that being able to spend more time with my kids in these kind of areas and letting them be I would say a little bit more adults in these kind of processes really helps build that respect and that Mutual relationship in you know just understanding but also in love and uh yeah definitely include your kids if you're not doing it already I I can encourage that more it's probably about a month later and I'm now in Chris's shop and you can see that he's really started to work on the frame already one of the things on the K100 and I'll put an image up here that drives me nuts is just the shape of the frame and the frame has this funny vshape to it that I just really don't like in a lot of cafe racers and what we did was uh we cut off the back of the frame to do the seat hoop which is pretty standard practice for doing a cafe racer but Chris also built some really cool bracketry to level out the gas tank which really gives you that real Cafe looking streamline and here's another image of just kind of what it looks like kind of with the before and after and I think in the before picture I actually do have something propping up the front of the the gas tank otherwise you'd really be able to see just how dramatic that V is now don't get me wrong there's some aftermarket kits that you can get that simulate this but as well there's lots of great builds out there that still allow for that V effect but I really really want to spend the extra I guess time and effort or put the extra time and effort into leveling out this Frame and now you can see Cohen and I are disassembling and taking that rolling chassis apart now that it's back in the shop so we can start painting and cleaning up the rest of the motor and it's interesting you probably noticed as we took it apart just how integral the motor is on the k00 to the actual frame because the frame itself is really just a a Trestle that sits on top of the motor on this bike and it's it's a definitely a cool feature and something that really well I mean it's what makes it the flying brick with the forks I was kind of surprised to realize that they are made by Brembo and this is well you'll see later on in the video uh a lot of work that we put into rebuilding these Forks that didn't really last for more than a season with a lot of things in the cafe eraser build or just the DIY world you know your resources that are out there really are YouTube the service manual and of course different forums and I did struggle with these for a while until I found YouTube video that explained exactly how to take these Forks apart properly and then I was able to get it I made some assumptions on this that obviously didn't work out the way they should have so I finally was able to get these apart correctly now in saying that I also want to point out that that's how a community like this is built is you know people that are out there watching these sorts of videos sharing these sorts of videos and hopefully subscribing to this kind of content to help creators like myself really build build their voice and be able to reach more individuals that are doing this kind of work to be able to help and that's a lot of what this is is us being able to as a community help each other out of course get some entertainment out of these videos but being a position where you know you are sharing and just I guess learning from one another is just such a huge thing I've noticed this of course a lot in the motorcycle kind of Cafe Racer and even local motorcycle community and in The Woodworking Community a lot of people just glaze over when someone asks for a subscription or a like but for those of you who don't create content you have to realize how important that is on YouTube and if I have maybe made an impression uh I'd love that I'd love for you to subscribe to this or give it a thumbs up or you know a comment or do all three cuz that really does help these kind of videos get out there to other people that maybe have the exact same questions and struggles on this kind of a project or others and I appreciate it if you can share if you can help out in that kind of way it's greatly appreciated and maybe I've distracted you throughout this and you're now realizing how did the motor get to the state that it's in and how the heck is the bike already starting to be reassembled well unfortunately I did lose a bit of the footage from this project and I did have the motor casings Vapor honed and this was actually a process I had never seen before but holy smokes what a difference it made in cleaning up these parts and if you are following on Instagram you probably saw this in the process that I went through I typically story more than anything on Instagram these days but this is usually where you'll get the most upto-date kind of preview of what I've been working on so if you haven't yet I'd love to see follow me over there and you can see some of the adventures with some of the new bikes that we have coming up getting into assembly this is probably one of my favorite and probably the most satisfying parts of a build cuz you really do start to see what the bike looks like also this is a really good shot of the bracket Chris made for the front of the gas tank and the mount here is designed to as I said earlier just bring up the front of the gas tank so it looks a little bit more level and here's an amazing back of the head transition to me starting to finish the gap tank and I tried to do a time lapse of this and tried to do a couple different chemicals to strip the paint but honestly sitting down with the orbital Mera sander was was the best way to get the paint off and probably the least toxic way to get the paint off the motorcycle tank lots of stuff was happening at this time and one of the problems I was trying to solve was some sort of mount for the battery and it made the decision to make my own battery box box and for that I just used some simple ABS plastic which I probably should not have cut on the laser and I just kind of put my Dimensions into a website called Maker case and that fired out basically these flat pack designed sides for the battery which uh I set it actually so it had a little bit of room on the inside dimension of the battery box and it worked like absolutely perfectly I I was huh I was blown away about how simple this was I mean obviously not everyone has a laser but this is definitely a great way that you could you know print these templates off even uh as a PDF and print them from the website and as you'll see here in a second just how absolutely perfect this box was for the battery and how well it just slipped in of course I did leave a little bit of room cuz I knew I needed some mounts but very simple box which I decided not to make as simple as it could be and you'll see in a second here first thing I did and just boring from my woodworking background was round over the edges and the reason is I'm going to cover this in carbon fiber and yes that's extra and yes I'm I'm happy that I did it this way cuz it just looks so cool but anytime you're doing any kind of a carbon fiber work you want to make sure that you have as many soft edges as possible so that's why I rounded these edges over and all I did here is I made a super easy easy easy stand for this and I'm just using total boat high performance to be able to lay out and wet out my carbon fiber I did a couple little carbon fiber projects on this bike that you'll kind of see as little touches and one of the biggest things you want to do whenever you're laying out carbon fiber is you got to get your epoxy a little tacky this is not a vacuum mold that I'm using uh what I'm doing here is just basically doing a wet lay and when you do this you really have to make sure you know your camera's in focus for one but two that you're giving it some time to cure and just tack up a little bit because you get such better results laying out the carbon fiber when it's able to stick a little bit to the epoxy and the way to do that of course like I said is to let it tack up a little bit I think I left this for about 40 minutes before I came back to it and yeah it works so good uh the edges are rough and this is right after doing it and it doesn't make sense to try and do anything with this till the epoxy is fully cured like you see right here and the reason is you really can distort the weave so this is definitely a game of patience and coming back a couple times to make sure that you're doing you know all the steps you can in this process in doing the carbon fiber once I got a lot of the I guess big chunks of carbon fiber in the corners trimmed up I did come back and do a couple more coats and then I did sand just as you can see here again with the Merk of sander just to be able to knock down the big fuzzies before doing the final flood coats whenever you're doing epoxy work you obviously want to make sure that you're not just pouring smooth epoxy on top of smooth epoxy cuz it doesn't really stick that well so you want to rough up the surface and this will help it stick because the epoxy really needs something to grab onto of course you want to make sure that you wipe off the dust so before doing another coat I just wipe it down with some mineral spirits and this very satisfying shot really uh shows you how cool that carbon fiber looks with a glossy layer of epoxy laid out over top of [Music] it finally with everything dry I did take the battery box off of the stand and all you see me doing here is just sanding down the top Edge I probably could have trimmed this a little bit before I sanded it but I just kind of went to town this this is a I think this is the first time I try this product which is a UV cure epoxy from totalboat and you'll see that I use a lot of total vot products in my videos and they've been a longtime supporter of my channel and the cool thing is because I've been working with them for so long they do offer any of my viewers a discount on all total boat product and for sure use that if you feel so inclined of course I get a tiny bit of a kickback but I think more than anything it does demonstrate to the companies that I'm working with that people are finding them through the videos that they're watching on YouTube and and other social media platforms these little brackets that I actually 3D printed are designed to hold the velcro strap across the front side of the battery so the battery can't slip out the front I'm using a sharai lithium ion battery and the battery can be oriented however you want because it is lithium ion and in this design because of how I wanted to sneak the battery kind of underneath the front half of the seat the battery will be oriented laying on its side I really don't think that the battery was going to move around too too much in this box of course I also want to make sure that I didn't have to deal with any problems down the road if it did for whatever reason vibrate forward and touch something and ground out of course they do have boots on top of the terminal so they're and the chances of that are pretty slim but it's the battery so I mean this is something that you don't necessarily want rattling around on the motorcycle while you're riding however the other criteria I needed this battery box to fit into was that it was easy to remove when it came time for winter my bike is stored or I guess my bikes are stored in a shed outside that is not insulated and as The Stereotype says uh it is cold here in Canada in the winter so I did 3D print as well these little I guess little hangers that go to the top of the box that I could just attach zip ties to and you can see just so nicely tucked up underneath the seat the battery box is this worked out way better than I thought it would I did remove it recently and there was absolutely zero wear on the zip ties so I know it's definitely strong enough to hold it in place I have a couple videos on my Channel about this but this is well this is the process that I use to make seat pans and this was the first seat pan the we'll say the version one seat pan on this bike and you'll notice that the epoxy was really white and I talk about this in the other video and I I make this mistake all the time and that is not to give the mold release enough time to cure and that first layer is super important that you let it cure leave it put the mold release on do a couple coats leave it for a couple hours and then come back if you do want to learn more about just the process that I use for making seat pans for shaping them and for doing all the foam work and everything definitely check out some of the other videos that I have this is a little jig that I believe I saw Dan from Cafe Racer garage build and all it is is a felt that is hot glued to a couple chunks of wood and just gives you a really straight line when you're going to shape the rough part of your seat pan and this is just a simple way to make sure that consistently you're getting the right line to cut to when you're shaping that seat pan once I got done with this seat and the shaping of it I well I hated it to be honest and I'll talk about that more in the later part of the video when we go over kind of the version two of the bike but I was in a bit of a crunch cuz we were heading on holidays cuz now we are in August of of 2022 and I wanted to take this bike on holidays with us again being version one of this bike there was a couple Gremlins a couple things that I hadn't finished yet but truly it was a runner however the lesson I learned is don't rush a project like this because we ran into some issues and we ran into some issues before well before it even left our neighborhood now I will go over the wiring a little bit towards the end of the video so definitely stay tuned for [Music] that it's like moving itself how much torque it has it looks like it's about to fall though I know it's just the kickstands really far forward and guess what it fell over BMW has we'll say a safety feature that doesn't allow the clutch to be engaged at the same time as the kickstand being down so I had it way too tight and while the bike was sitting in the driveway ising it quite literally fell over and yeah that was the end of that idea and am bringing this bike on holidays this brings us to version 2.0 of the bike I did Rush this like I said and I did the wrap myself with just some inexpensive vinyl but I absolutely hated the shape Not only was it flat and I slid around on it when I was riding the seat itself also had no life it just felt dull and I had already talked to the leather Smith here locally who had made the seat for the cb500 and he was willing to of course do another seat for this bike but when I did this version I really didn't have the time to wait so I just wrapped it myself with some inexpensive vinyl that I got on Amazon and I was Off to the Races I did think that this seat shape would be okay and this was the original design that I wanted to go with however after riding on it for a while and just looking at the profile of it it just didn't work so I redesign the whole thing and there's a whole video about that redesign and that new seat on my channel here's a link in the top Corner if you do want to check out that full build so you can pause this video go watch the full seat build and come back and I do really hope that the videos really are able to demonstrate how approachable these processes are and just how cool you can I guess make your bike and personalize your bike just with a little bit of extra time and effort as opposed to buying something that is right off the shelf and if you do have something that's right off the shelf Maybe maybe that is your version 1.0 and it's time to move on to version 2.0 here's some good close-up shots that I got of the seat I'm really happy with how this turned out we had the idea to add stripes down the one side of the seat kind of resemble the m style striping that BMW does you can find a lot of Kyle's work over on Instagram so go check that out but now let's move on to the biggest change of version 2.0 version 2.0 well is almost a year later and I didn't think that this is actually something that was going to happen for a couple years but I was able to connect with Jack G out of Australia and they have an amazing front- end conversion kit for the k100s that even includes a breake adapter kit so you can keep the stock wheel I did do a full build video on this so definitely check that out I'll link it in the top corner here and if you're noticing that my voice has changed a little bit well you're right I was sick when I record the voice over for the first half of this video and feeling much better so uh thanks thanks for asking the fork conv version kit has everything you need including bearings to be able to change out the front forks to a more modern setup there's a cool feature on the website which I talk about in the full video where it actually lets you pick the forks that you are going to be swapping with and then it gives you the different measurements and everything so just to make sure that you're you're picking the right equipment or I guess pairing the right equipment to their front-end conversion the forks that I'm using are off a 2006 GSXR 600 and uh there's lots of different versions of this bike the GS6R that is that have the same Fork setup so it's pretty easy to find them these ones I bought off a friend who got them on Facebook Marketplace so definitely just check out uh what you'll see online and and you'll definitely find this set believe the forks I paid around $500 for these I've seen them go for more and I've seen them go for Less the one thing that I would always suggest is make sure all the bolts and the brake calipers are included with what you buy it's definitely worth it to spend a little bit more money and make sure that you're getting a complete set of front forks it just means you're doing less chasing for those missing parts I also installed a couple of these beauty rings and the main part of the build was done but let's chat a little bit about the wiring let's see how not confusing I can make this coming straight off the battery is the main fuse which from there runs power directly to the starter solenoid the power going into the mo unit oh know this is the mo unit blue this runs everything from the signals to the start all electronically there's one signal wire that comes from the handlebars and that one wire allows you just a real simple way to wire in all your controls I'll put in the description the wiring diagram that I did use actually everything runs as if it was stopped there's wiring even for the fuel level sensor and uh I have a light that goes on when I am low on fuel as well as I have a light that goes on when the battery is charging and working I have a power signal that comes out of the block as well uh which goes to this fuse relay which off there that's some of the power for the accessories that I've used this turns on when the mo unit turns on which is really nice and I have a lot of these little morette things if there's a better solution that you know of i' Love I'd love to hear it if you have made it this far in this video I'm I'm super impressed this is a lot of work and a lot of fun I really appreciate the support on this channel but let's get to probably what you want to see which is what the finished product of the K100 is [Music] over two years of [Music] building there was more effort and more research done on this build than any other thing I've built in my life but let me tell you the finished product I couldn't be more happy with huge thanks again to the brands that partnered in this video I've added some discount coupons and links down below for you to check [Music] out as always I super appreciate you watching these videos and I've queued up another build video for you to check [Music] out you

Channel: Further North Fabrication

Views: 68,663

Keywords: bmw, k100, BMW K100 Cafe Racer, cafe reacer build, BMW K100 Cafe Racer Build, motorcycle build, DIY Motorcycle, M sport, custom made motorcycle, 1986 BMW K100

Id: vW872lk5j-w

Length: 33min 1sec (1981 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 03 2023