Welcome, to the 'Bricks' thread...

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zebra

Bachelor Dog
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Welcome, to the 'Bricks' thread...

I thought we could use a separate thread for K100's and K75's (nicknamed 'Flying Bricks'), since they are water-cooled, and not airheads, and thus do not fit under the airhead thread, even though the bikes age (80's and early 90's) is very similar to that of many of the airheads, and thus there was a topic or two posted under the Airhead thread...

So, a little bit of (very rough!)history: BMW was faced with competition from in-line, water-cooled 4-cylinder engines from Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki and Suzuki in the late '70's, early '80's, and needed a similar bike engine to compete...

They approached Peugeot, and secured a 1000 cc water-cooled in-line 4 cylinder, obviously shaft-driven, and later launched a BMW K100 (1000 cc) engine onto the market (opinions differ on whether BMW built a whole new engine, or used the Peugeot engine for much 'inspiration'  ;)

Obviously, this engine needed to be tilted on it's side, to allow the shaft drive to be orientated to the configuration needed for motorbike (rather than motorcar), and this whole 'mass' of engine had the shape of a brick sh!thouse, and became colloquially known as the 'Flying Brick'...

Fuel-injected, often with ABS, - in the 80's it was a bike considered ahead of it's time, but people really thought that engine was fugly!

It was the de-facto bike for traffic police in many, many countries around the world.

Unlike normal BMW bike evolution, the K75 (its smaller brother) was introduced AFTER the K100 had been launched, and with some vibration-reducing technology. The K100 was considered 'vibey' by some, obviously they had never ridden a Thumper...!

30 years later, with many people snapping up older Airheads for use in Cafe Racer/Bobber/Street Tracker projects, some people are looking toward the 'Bricks, seeing the value/technology they offer, and then setting to work, either restoring a 'Legend' or chopping it...!

Please add to the Board, add corrections to the little I have added above, and keep the 'Bricks flying high...
Chris
 
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