Leaving the swing arm assembly aside I drove towards my goal of removing the engine and gearbox, and so the exhaust pipe nuts then became the next problem, however it would seem that even the most mollycoddled air head twins can suffer from seizures of these items so after a quick session with c spanner, anti seize spray, and my propane torch followed by a look at the cost of new nuts, I resolved to do what one of the manuals suggested and cut them off , some delicate work with the disc cutter (That seems to have become the weapon of choice in this disassembly!) and some sharp blows with a chisel and the nuts split and wound off easily. The cylinder head threads looked pretty poor so it was obvious this was a much visited battleground and I had made a good call.







Now the real fun began. The ugly siamese exhaust pipes, obviously intended for sidecar configuration snaked across and under the front of the engine and met behind the RH footrest, sandwiched between engine and frame,and there had rusted in contentment. There was no movement in the entire assembly and the pipes would not budge in the heads. I tried copious floods of easing fluid and repeated heating, trying to move the pipes, to no avail. In the end in desperation I  took the disc cutter (again!) and cut the pipes into two stubs then I could finally rotate them slightly which allowed the penetrating fluid to finally penetrate and after some protracted wrestling they came out followed by the remnants of the lower pipes. My original vague intention to replace the exhaust system with a standard twin R75 exhaust system seemed to have become a definite one.

The Carburettors were not a problem to remove, a lot of white dust resided in the inlet tract and the carburettors themselves looked like they will need a lot of TLC before they past muster again, indeed they may actually be too far gone.

Although I expected problems I must admit this BMW is in the worst state of corrosion I have ever encountered, were it not for the fact that it is so rare a bird,I would have given up, or perhaps never started it.The extreme measures I have had to resort to remove parts so far is not in my normal repertoire. So it was  with trepidation I approached the engine itself.

Amazingly all the rusty nuts undid smoothly and the rocker box heads and barrels presented no problems to remove and lo and behold the bores were perfect with no signs of rust. The Air filter and both sides of the rear casing came off followed by the front cover  (with some encouragement to one of the Allen keys with an impact driver).  Internally all the covers contained a lot more white alloy dust but the castings were substantially sound. I noted that all  the electrics at the front looked to be in an advanced state of decomposition but that was for later, I pressed on with engine removal. I  raised the whole bike up on its main stand with some axle stands on the front and drained the engine where another shock awaited, the oil was clean as if it had flowed from a new can rather than after 20 years encased in the gearbox, whatever the state of the cycle parts,the engine and gearbox so far does seem to be in a much better state.

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