This all started a week ago when I pulled the pod and bike trailer/bike over to Bob’s Motorwerks near Red Lodge, MT. It was a small train pulling out of camp.

When I arrived at Bob’s, we ran it inside and Bob put it up on the hoist to be ready and warmed up for the work to start in the morning.

This model BMW has a transmission that has what Bob calls ‘issues’. When BMW made this transmission, they quite putting in a little snap ring that keeps one of the shafts inside from destroying a bearing. When this bearing goes out, the metal destroys the other bearings and often blows the whole case apart. This is not good as you might imagine on a long journey around the world. These transmissions WILL go out, it is just a matter of time. Bob is a renowned ‘fixer’ of these transmissions. He gets transmissions sent to him from all over the country to have them fixed. Bob takes the transmissions apart and has a small grove ground in the shaft by a local machinist. The first part of this job was to take the transmission out. This entailed nearly taking the entire bike apart.

Once Bob has the trans out he takes it completely apart. It is really somewhat disturbing how he just shakes the parts out and you wonder if he will ever be able to get it all back in that case.

That big shaft with all the gears, second from the left, needs to have all the gears pulled off and that is the shaft that gets the grove and new snap ring. (Correction, Bob says; You showed a photo of the shafts and stated that the second one from the left with all the gears on it was the one that needed the clip. Actually, the one that needed the clip had already been disassembled and was the one lying naked with all the gears that had been taken off it. It's the one with all the loose gears at the right of the picture. Don't want folks to think I'm putting clips on the intermediate shaft instead of the output shaft.)

It is quite a process to get the trans apart. Bob uses a heat gun to warm up the case so he can get the thing apart as well as back together. I tried to stay away while Bob was working on the bike and for sure when he was putting things back together. He is meticulous and needs no interruptions at critical moments. When there was something I needed to know, he would have me come over and watch.

 The guts back in.

This is just the start. Bob has special tools to set up and shim the case. He takes meticulous measurements and has to determine the shim pack that it needs. You want to be VERY quiet when Bob is in this stage.

The case is ready for the final torque of the case bolts.

The final product with its ten-mile guarantee….

Then it is just a simple matter of putting it all back together….

Bob did a complete service work on the bike as it was going back together. This is a really good bike but it needs good care to get you there and back.

New fluids all around as well as new seals where needed. The electrical system got an up grade as there are components that often go bad and it is best to replace those now with heavy duty parts.

I had to leave at this point to get back to camp and to enjoy Thanksgiving with friends in the Tongue River Valley.

Cheers, Rx