Here's a pretty rare piece - it's a overhead cam 250cc twin BMW race engine. This engine is in the Heinz Luthringshauser collection in Otterbach Germany. The engine features a horizontally split case with a three bearing crankshaft and overhead cam.

 

Another engine in the same collection is this 1969 4 valve 500cc overhead cam prototype racing engine.

Here's a view of a 1936 R5 that looks pretty good at first glance, but when you start to look closely you see postwar fenders, tank, front fork, headlight,  handlebars, controls, and transmission. This would be a good long term project to make right, with the owner enjoying it as-is while looking for parts. I've owned two R5s over the years, and they're really a beautiful machine.

Something that came out during the 1970s was the "Pop" Dryer fairing. The same fairing was sold for the /2 twins as well as the /5 & /6 bikes, but the massive cast aluminum mounting bracket varied depending on application. The fairing itself is attached to the bike frame, and the smaller shield moved with the headlight. I still remember the first time I saw a photo of the fairing in Road Rider magazine... I thought it was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen! Twenty five + years later I'm still convinced it's the ugliest thing I've ever seen on a BMW!   My apologies to anyone out there that likes them! There's an active club for collectors of "Pop" Dryer sidecars, but I wrote to them offering them the fairing - and got no takers!

Recently I was asked about the proper routing for a wire harness on a /2. As it happens I needed to remove the gas tank from my unrestored R69US, so we had an excellent opportunity to see how the factory intended it. Here's the result... Not a bad shine for 30 year old paint, eh?

Here's the right side view of the harness routing. Two metal wire ties  hold the main harness on the large backbone, a smaller wire tie holds the harness just in front of the top motor mount clamp, and just at the left edge of the photo you can see another large metal wire tie holding the speedometer cable in place.

Yet another R16 "survivor", and this one is quite nice!  I have a reader of my web page in Norway that's just amazed by the number of R16s and R17s that seem to be around!

Here's a 1949 R24 rolling basket case that came up for sale in 1989. The fenders and tank on this bike look to be in excellent condition. The headlight, seat and controls are later parts.

Here's a very young looking Roland Slabon (Editor, Vintage BMW Bulletin) aboard his just-acquired R42. This photo was taken in Belgium around 1979.

A few of my German bike collector friends have stopped going to the Harley/Indian swap meets here in the States, saying that there's just not that much of interest for them. I don't agree. Here's a rough R12 that showed up at one of these meets. It had recently been imported from Greece. Also at this same swap meet were two Steib sidecars for sale, plus other small stuff.