Silly question number 16

[John Coles]

OK so I have not asked one of these for a while so here goes.
I assume the flat twin engines from BMW have much the same internals nd also external ancillary bits and presumably the gear box in mounted in similar locations. So does anyone know why the shaft-drive on some bikes connect to the rear wheel on the opposite side to others?

[slparry]

OK so I have not asked one of these for a while so here goes.
I assume the flat twin engines from BMW have much the same internals nd also external ancillary bits and presumably the gear box in mounted in similar locations. So does anyone know why the shaft-drive on some bikes connect to the rear wheel on the opposite side to others?

The old air cooled boxers and the later oil cooled models had their bevel box on the right side.

On later watercooled models they moved it over to the left side for design reasons, the exhausts was also moved from the left to the right at the same time, I've been told the exhaust change was so that the hot exhaust would be on the right and some people had caught their textile pants on the exhaust when it was on the left side (how true that is I don't know)

The clutch is in very different location on the older engine, being a dry clutch it's inbetween the engine and the gearbox but on the LC engine it's a wet clutch under the front cover behind the front wheel.

The LC engine is radically different to the older engines

Either way it's the latest watercooled engine that has the shaft on the opposite side, as do the later K series models too

[Pete.]

That's not it at all - all the Friday engines were fitted upside-down.

Strange lot those Germans...

[tanneman]

Previous models of the air/oil cooled engine had the shaft drive on the RH side whilst all other shaft drive models from BMW had it on the LH side. I think it was just an exercise to simplify production and curb costs. Only 1 type of swing arm plus bits needs to be produced now as it the same across the range. The difference lays with the final drive internals.

[Blackal]

That's not it at all - all the Friday engines were fitted upside-down.

Strange lot those Germans...

For some reason - I've ended up with bikes with one cylinder not level with the other! I suspect others must have similar, without realising?

I did ask the dealer if there was going to be a recall, and they went into peels of laughter - I don't think they acted very professional, so I changed dealer!

Al