As I approach retirement, I've been wanting to do another project bike.  You know, take an old bike that doesn't run and restore/rebuild it so that it lives again.  I did this before with a 1982 XL250R and it was a lot of fun, but for the next one I wanted something a little classier and one that I would want to keep.  Since I bought my BMW F900XR and joined the BMW MOA I've been seeing how cool the old "airheads" are.  Those are the older Beemers that have the boxer engine and are only air-cooled.  When I went to the national rally in Redmond, Oregon this year I saw dozens of them.  Some were ridden there, and others trailered because they're show pieces.  Regardless, that showed me that what I wanted was one of those for my next project.  But how to find one?

I put a couple of posts up on the BMW MOA and ADVrider forums to start with and then figured I'd just scour Craigslist, FB Marketplace, etc. until I found something.  I thought it would take months to find something.  Two days later, I get a message from a guy on ADVrider that he might have just what I wanted.  It's a 1976 BMW R75/6 - a 750cc.  Here's the story.  The original owner and his wife picked up the bike in Germany new from the factory in 1976 and toured around Europe with it for a while.  They then shipped it back to the Pacific Northwest where he rode it for another 10 years.  Kids and life happened and the bike sat for about 30 years.  My new friend Paul bought it from him about 10 years ago thinking it'd be a great project bike to work on with his son.  But that didn't happen.  When he saw my post in ADVrider, he contacted me.  Yesterday my wife and I drove over on a beautiful Saturday morning to west Seattle to pick it up.

And now here it is in my garage!  The picture makes it look pretty good, but there's a lot of work to be done.  You can see in the picture I have the Krauser side cases and a Luftmeister matching topcase, so when I get it restored, it'll actually be capable of me taking trips on it.  The bike has all it's parts, though many will need to be replaced, but that will be the joy of the project.  Cleaning, painting, replacing, tuning, etc.  This will take me a long time, but that's the point - taking your time and doing it right.  I'll post progress here.