Sleeper R75/5
© Copyright, 2011, R.
Fleischer
sleeperR75/5.htm-83
This is a posed photo, we did NOT ride in
those jeans and shoes, with no helmets and no proper leather
jackets, etc!!
I THINK this was taken at the Prineville Oregon BMWMOA National Rally in 1980
What is a 'sleeper'? A sleeper is a highly modified
motorcycle that is made to look stock.
This is obviously a 'toaster'
R75/5. It is a 1972 model I purchased brand
new, from the dealership I worked at. This is mostly a
stock-looking bike. The fairing is an Avon, the bike was
delivered to the dealership by Butler and Smith, the
distributors, with that fairing, and the white round item in the
windshield area is a rear facing audio 'horn'; there is an
experimental and hidden small HAM radio
on this bike. The antenna is there, but you will have to guess where it
is! The hard-to-see items at
the ends of the bars are a variation on a type of cold-weather
'Hippo-hands'. The saddlebags are by Bates, a very
common name back then, they are leather. Note the one
push-latch, luggage type, on them. I had a raccoon push
that and open the left saddlebag and eat my favorite peanut
butter cookies, on a trip to Lake Tahoe, think it was October
1973, when I camped overnight near the top of Ebbett's Pass,
Highway 4.
I worked part time at a dealership as a mechanic at that time. The passenger is my ex-wife, Jean....in a much happier time for the two of us. We are wearing the light-weight windbreaker jackets of the Flying AAA Ranch, where we sometimes went in our 1957 or our later 1967 Cessna C-182, for a week or weekend retreats/vacations. I had been many times to Baja with that bike, and those airplanes over the years.
What is so unusual about this bike, is what it
became; and, how stock it looked ALWAYS, ON PURPOSE. After we were divorced, and with OVER
110,000 miles on this bike,
I decided it was time for a TOTAL overhaul. It became very much
more. I had never originally intended to do other than restore it to
showroom fresh, keeping the previously done modifications, primarily for
handling and higher rpm operation. This little
bit of prose is not a listing of step by step, year by year,
modifications, but hits the highlights. It still had
those bags, that fairing, that horn speaker, etc.
Then...I was given a very unique supercharger, and the
juices began to flow.
I modified the bike very extensively; yet it remained looking exactly as you see it, above. Well, NOT 100% exactly. If you looked VERY carefully, you would see what appeared to be a stock but, somehow taller, cover over the starter motor. You would see some beefing-up at the steering head. The rear brake rod and lever might look a tad different...the pedal too. Subtle changes.
Some modifications were made...well, a LOT of modifications...some of which did not happen immediately. This engine had been originally blueprinted, by ME immediately after I purchased it. After all, I had not been 100% through an Airhead engine before, just modest shop jobs. THEN, after break-in, came a total teardown, and EXTENSIVE modifications. Alternator modified, transmission modified for fast shifting....and on and on it went...but it remained looking very stock.
1. The carburetors were sold, and a pair of identical carburetors, but with broken internal main jet castings, hence the carbs were obtained for nothing, were installed. Before installation, the carburetors were completely sealed from the outside air, and were totally bored out, and very much modified, so that they were, mechanically, simply straight tubes. The cylinder head intake ports and spigots, etc., were also much modified. The throttle and 'choke cables were original, NOT functioning, and total dummies. These cables led to an area under the fuel tanks, where they were simply chopped off and tied to the backbone area, doing nothing.. There were NO butterflies, choke parts, floats, diaphragms, or anything else in these carburetors.
2. The engine was disassembled for overhaul, and a few other things done besides a typical overhaul....such as... the oiling system was modified, including modifications to the rod and main bearings, the oil distribution at the main and cam area modified, the oil pump modified, the oil filter area modified, the engine fully balanced, special pistons installed, special rings, the mentioned head work and more. The old offset high lift rockers I'd previously installed were removed and custom aluminum roller rockers installed. Pushrods and lifters were modified. A camshaft with longer intake duration and slightly higher lift was installed. Together with the modified rockers, the lift was increased a reasonable amount. I spent a lot of time on the valve gear.
The engine was no longer a "750", the displacement WAS increased, but LOOKED stock. This was a very tricky thing to do to the original cylinders. It was tricky to increase the displacement, due to how the studs fit the engine on the early engines.
A very long list of internal modifications could be listed here, but I won't. I mentioned the oil pump was modified as I originally anticipated very high rpm and was worried about cavitation. An oil pan modification was made, and the oil pickup modified too. It all SEEMED to look stock, from the outside. The heads had a type of squish chamber, single plugs, and the compression ratio was lowered, from the head work and pistons selected, to about 8:1. The squish area was very tight, however. The exhaust valve was originally stock, the intake valve came from a Lincoln V-8. Special valve seats were installed, the heads ported from a 'guesstimate'. NO, I never flow-tested the heads.
The ignition was the stock
points type (modified some for stability), the long dwell early BMW automatic
advance was used. An ignition points amplifier was designed
and built. Points current....from memory here....was about
1/4th ampere, and the points
amplifier was designed with a circuit such that multiple triggering's from one
points opening or points bounce that is, would be unlikely. Later,
I designed and built a capacitive discharge ignition, that fired surface gap
racing plugs. That ignition had a very special set of racing coils.
The final change to the ignition was to make my own pickup that was crankshaft
triggered (end of alternator), and the CDI ignition was modified so that
MULTIPLE sparks occurred at each cylinder's triggering. This proved
to be VERY good. I did a LOT of work to make an electronic circuit that
controlled the ignition advance. At one time I tried a vacuum
advance unit, was not satisfied. I ended up with a circuit with a knob
that could be turned to change the advance curve and total amount. Once I
found the correct amount on a dyno, I sealed the control.
Looking back on it, I COULD have simply modified the stock ATU
and gotten away with it.
The alternator was changed to the late 1974, 280 watt type, and an electronic
regulator of my own design was incorporated. The battery was a 11 cell
nickel-cadmium wet-cell type from a corporate jet, in a box so-designed to look relatively
stock. Before the capacitive discharge ignition was installed, the spark plugs were experimented with for some time on a dyno, and
the stock TYPE of projected-nose plug was decided-upon, but a rather cold rating
was used. I tried surface gap plugs, and went back to the projected nose
types. The gap was only a bit more than stock, around 0.035"
as I remember. Spark plug caps of 1000 ohms were used, with stock
wires. I had access to a dyno (Axtel's) so a lot of
testing was done for these things, and many others. Much
time was spent on setting up the ignition and the
""carburetion"". The exhaust system was designed by
myself, and was simply a modified version of the stock system,
with added crossover, and modified muffler innards. It was
relatively QUIET!...but was a bit LONGER than stock, but hardly anyone ever
noticed that. This was done originally in conjunction with a
modified intake system. Later this was very
heavily modified.
3. I made TWO versions of this motor. In the first version, I removed the starter motor, removed the alternator, and made an adjustable diameter v-belt pulley that fit in place of the alternator rotor. I mounted the special almost unobtainium modified-vane type supercharger in place of the starter motor. It was slightly higher than would fit under the starter cover, so I heli-arc welded higher sides to the starter cover, then machined that area, and painted the cover...so the engine looked stock to a reasonable look-see. Due to constraints on pulley sizes that would fit, things did not work out for the boost pressure I wanted, so the blower was reversed, alternator reinstalled, and a modified flywheel and ring gear was used to drive the blower. Try as I did, that setup would whine a lot. I needed to make a quieter flywheel ring gear and drive, but never got around to that massive job. An adjustable mount that was far more complicated than can be easily described, was made to adjust the engagement of the blower gear and the 'starter' gear. The starter, being gone, meant the engine was kick-started. Starting would have been VERY difficult (and WAS, initially!), due to the long fuel path and very low amount of intake flow during kickstarting, so a simple fuel injector was modified and installed into the airbox, used ONLY for starting. It operated every time the starter button was depressed. It was a 1968 VW gasoline car electric injector, the same types I used at the intake of the supercharger.
4. The airbox started off to be the stock clam-shell, with a few minor changes, but fully insulated, and the MAIN fuel system injector was as described. NO major attempt at cooling the intake charge with an intercooler was made, but careful attention to internal wall insulation. ALL work was done so the appearance was stock...unless one had an identical bike next to it, to compare, back and forth.
Almost no one ever saw this bike as 'modified', except the usual bags and fairing. That had been my intention.
5. The blower initially, before the injection was installed, sucked air from a modified carburetor, a rather flat carburetor, from an industrial engine....gravity fed from the stock fuel tank. There was a pop-off backfire valve, that doubled as a over-boost release valve, crudely made but effective, in the right side clamshell area, that exited from a hole, that I told people, if they asked, that it was an extra engine oil breather outlet. The entire intake system was fully closed, and sealed from the air normally coming from the timing chest/alternator area. It was THIS carburetor that the SINGLE cable from the slightly modified throttle twist grip area, operated. The type and model of carburetor, and how I did it, and kept it not tall at all, was also interesting. This system worked, but had problems, so I removed it and used the VW injectors, this time at the intake of the blower. The injector was fed by a very common but pressure-regulated car fuel pump, and the electrical signal for the injector was a small flat industrial type potentiometer, hidden INSIDE the modified stock-looking throttle assembly at the handlebars. The three wires to this control actually went into the modified original throttle cable outer sheath. Turning the throttle caused the potentiometer to change its position. I did a lot of experimenting with this method, and it ended up working outrageously well. There were major hassles along the way getting the fuel delivery to be low enough for idle; and, to have a butterfly air control. I ended up using a butterfly from a much larger American car carburetor, and connected it in the intake area of the blower, and controlled it from the stock throttle cable. Yes, the throttle assembly was the stock-looking two-cable type, one cable had three thin wires in it, the other was more or less stock, and ran the butterfly. It was VERY tricky to coordinate the injector potentiometer and that cable-to-butterfly. I finally found a very interesting way of doing it, with selectable pins holes and a home-made small cam.
6. The brakes looked stock, but had high friction linings, actuating cam modifications too. The over-all leverage was increased. That was done by having a friend MAKE me a new brake lever from some other bike, it was longer, and the pivot point was changed, so it had more leverage. It appeared stock with a modest glance. The suspension looked stock, but the rear shocks were opened, played with, and the front forks rather modified internally.
7. A LOT of effort was made to try to get good boost characteristics. There are several types of mechanical superchargers, commonly seen are the vane and the centrifugal, and they have differing characteristics. All pull a fair amount of horsepower from the engine, some WAY too much. The type I used was a rather sophisticated modified vane type. It was one of the very first ones ever made that had semi-flexible vanes, and did not have too high a power drain, and it produced boost at a quite reasonable rpm, and had a rather nice boost pressure curve. The vanes were exotic, and, yes, they flexed, as designed, as rpm rose.
8. The supercharger had not only cleverly designed vanes, but a flexible diaphragm, that changed some clearances as rpm rose, to prevent damage and control boost characteristics. Avon Green Spot race tires were my standard tires later on, as I got a mess of them free. Previously the tires were the old Continental RB2/K112
9. Now, you are probably asking, how about PERFORMANCE?
Well, let us start with the handling....with the modified front and rear shocks and changed springs and valving, and a top triple clamp that was actually a modified lower cast triple clamp, and a frame beef-up near both the battery and steering head, and a beefy brace as part of the fender mount, ..... the handling was pretty good. The short wheelbase, and the fairing, made for reasonable handling, and I refused to modify to the long wheelbase. Braking was about as good, for one hard stop, as dual Brembo discs on the later bikes. I did not install discs, nor ventilate the brake backing plate, as I wanted it all to look stock.
Power: YES!!!!....LOTS! t
The engine idled slightly roughly and a bit noisily at about 1300-1400 rpm. The bike was probably a bit slower on a jackrabbit take-off unless a lot of clutch-damaging RPM was used. I just tried to ride the bike normally. After the rpm crossed about 2800, the boost came in, and it came in very smoothly. The increase in power was VERY constant and VERY steadily increasing. Sitting upright, in normal touring position, with sudden full throttle and at about 4500-4800 rpm, the front wheel would start to rise, and continue to rise some, to a quite nasty height, to about 7500 or tad more rpm. I only took it beyond 7500 a few times, once to just over 8000. Generally, there was no reason for more than 7000 or so. The bike was VERY quick, and I later incorporated a lower ratio rear drive, the stock had been 3.20. The bike would reach redline rather easily. The stock 4 speed gearbox was used; although modified a second time for smoother shifting after I experienced some breakage problems with my too-radical quick-shifting original modifications. There was no problem with the clutch (I'd installed a stock BMW sport clutch spring).
The dyno showed upwards of 84 corrected horsepower at the rear wheel at approximately sea level; I can't remember the rpm, probably 7500 or more. This was on the best premium gasoline of the time, a tad over 100 octane. This type of power, meant, probably, approaching 100 at the flywheel, and I felt it could not safely be maintained....I was sure the engine would explode/melt-down;....so, full throttle runs lasting over maybe 15 seconds were NEVER performed. There was never a serious mechanical problem, in normal (yes, even very spirited!) riding. I did have the transmission problem mentioned, and one of my earliest modified rocker arms broke, and VERY luckily that did no serious damage. Problems, little ones mostly, did occur, and these, such as oil leaks, were fixed, although I could NEVER fix leaks at the cylinder bases...the power was too great for the cases and cylinders. But, the was bike ridden extensively with no major problems. NOT ONE PERSON ever noticed that it was supercharged. Few ever asked about the gear drive whine, which I never tried to fix properly due to the enormous amount of work that would have entailed.
The use of this sort of power, even at part throttle at reasonable (?) speeds, was VERY hard on the exhaust valves. The heads were removed at 15,000 mile intervals, and a valve job done. Ultimately, a very pricey racing exhaust seat and valve was installed, that helped the valve last longer. NOT all that much longer!
Oil: Castrol R, 40SAE, just
because I liked the smell and had used it in my Norton Manx's.
Rear end: 3.00:1
Tires: Back to Continental RB2 and K112, or Metzeler ME88's, after using up my available Avon Green
Spots.
Front forks: very progressive springs and two brazed up rod holes, a few
other mods too, and I used Mil
5606A oil
Rear shocks: Koni, internally modified to give stiffer shock action,
slightly heavier spring.
Oil system pressure: approximately 100 psi at just over idle
on hot oil (relief valve
modified, plus MANY system mods).
Boost, high: 14.3 pounds at 7500 rpm (Lord Knows what it was at the
8000+ I hit once).
Boost, low: very approximately 1.9-2.4 psi at about 3500. This was not
overly consistent, and some boost was sometimes noted as low as 2500.
Boost calculations were normalized to 15 psi atmospheric, thus boost pressures
noted are REAL, and above absolute atmospheric.
Sound level: Exhaust several Db
louder, deeper, pleasing. Gear drive whine was rather excessive.
Top speed: unknown. It would hit redline in 4th with the
3.00 rear end. You want to know how fast that is?
Drag strip: never had it on one.
Wheelies: no problem. It would wheelie in normal seating position,
in any of the first 3 gears. Sit too far back and whack the throttle
at 5500, and things got WAY too exciting, WAY too fast.
Present location: wouldn't you love to
know!
How to identify from a stock /5 toaster if you see it:
HINT: look at the starter motor cover.....look a bit tall too you? The throttle cover has a funny 'bump' to it? Top triple a modified lower triple? Put #1 eyeball on the carburetor shaft/linkage, careful look-see!
© Copyright, 2011, R. Fleischer