Rosie Red, New for 2022 - Issue #27

We took Rosie to the powder room for a little freshening up…

I spent a few hundred words talking about my relationship with my 2nd liquid cooled R1200GS Adventure, named Rosie. I didn’t come up with the name but I’ve certainly embraced it. That recent newsletter issue you can read here. There’s not much more I want to add to that story in this one.

In this issue, I wanted to talk about my recent project of refreshing Rosie. I’ve owned the bike for 4 years and, thanks to a global Pandemic, have only ridden it for 24,000 miles which was what I rode every 2 years so a 50% decrease in riding these last few years at least when it comes to long distance touring. I can blame the pandemic but I can also blame having a variety of motorcycles as well as a truck to haul them around. If a rally is 1000 miles away, I don’t have to Iron Butt my way there and back. I can now load the bikes up and drive down which takes miles away from seat-time. Some of you might envy that situation but many don’t because the ride is part of the journey. If I was retired, I’d feel differently but taking a week off work for every rally would mean taking off 18 weeks a year. Instead, I attend 18 rallies and only take off one day (Friday) and I’m back in my bed at 3AM Monday morning for work that day.

There were some goals for this refresh of Rosie:

December 21st, I load up the GS and drive to Watertown NY which is 5.5 hours each way and leave the bike with my friend BB8. He and I did the Translabrador together in 2018 and he had the tools and space to babysit my bike for a few months. I could keep the bike on a lift and he’d do some powder coating for me and it’d give me an excuse to spend a few weekends over Winter with my friend.

We tore the bike down to the frame + motor and everything else was set aside. We pulled the shocks, performed most of the 24,000 mile maintenance and took stock of BMW parts like bolts and cracked plastics we wanted to replace. Over 4 months, I placed about $550 in parts orders from BMW to restore things that were on their last leg. Some replacements were done because I wanted to as the BMW probably didn’t need that many replacement parts. I broke the rear level sensor removing the shock so that alone was $150.

After the bike was fully torn down, we called it a weekend and I packed up my suspension, mailed that to Ted Porter’s Beemer Shop and I mailed my Sargent seat to Jacksonville Florida to have the heat pad element replaced under warranty and ordered Cardinal Powdercoat for BB8 to get to work in the 3 months break

Here are a few photos from that first visit:

It took 12 weeks for Beemershop to refurbish my front & rear shocks for a cost of $750. Sargent Seats sent back my now restored seat and MaxBMW sent a box of parts we needed to piece the bike back together. BB8 had also powder coated most of what we would need to get the bike back in rideable condition.

We worked for 2 full days on March 18th and 19th to piece things back together. This was mostly uneventful except MaxBMW sent us the wrong bolt for the lower shock. I noticed it before I caused any damage to the rear swing arm and we had to put the old back in and order another correct one. BMW requires you replace suspension bolts when you change things. Most don’t replace the bolts but I do….just trying to following the service manual.

Over those 2 days, Rosie Red really started to come together:

Final work weekend, just 4 more hours of tasks the 1st week of April. I went back to Watertown one last time. More parts arrived from MaxBMW and all of the powder coating was completed. I had planned to return mid-April for us to go on a 2-3 day trip together but in reality, my April & May were already filling up and the weather wasn’t quite warm enough yet with snow on the forecast. BB8 and I decided to do the final work now and I’d head home for us to reconnect in the Summer for a trip.

We put the new RLink security system / GPX tracker 4G on the bike, reinstalled the battery, installed the rear luggage rack, nice shiny racks and touched every bolt to make sure we torqued everything to the correct specification. There was a lot of “did you torque this one down yet?” questions from both of us.

This was the fastest part of the work because the bike was basically almost whole again.

I only took one photo that day since it was cool to see the red powder coat sticking to the tires as we rolled it out of the garage.

I arrived home and immediately detailed the bike for the first time in 2 years. Rosie has not been this clean in a very long time. Monday, I went out to one of my favorite spots to ride around on some fairly clean trails when I want to de-stress after a long day and snapped some photos of Rosie Red in her final form. This is probably the last time I fully tear down the bike because in 4 years, I’ll be moving on to a new GS but it was great to see her in this form and it really renewed how much I appreciate and love this motorcycle.

I also put together a few videos on this refresh journey

This has probably gone on long enough but given that this project cost about $2000 and occupied the entire Winter over 3 core weekends, I felt it deserved a post with lots of photos and videos.

I wanted to thank BB8 for letting me steal an important space in his garage for the entire Winter. He also did a lot of work between our visits to make this bike come out really gorgeous! Spending a few weekends with a friend during the time of year when we can’t ride was a lot of fun and I’d like to do something similar every year if we have a reason to hang out.

This MUCH red might not be for you but I love how the bike came out. It’s on the edge of being too much red for me but nope, I’m proud and happy to ride it to events and rallies.

It’s time for Mosko Moto to put out a red pair of bags :)