Boxerworks.com

A friend called and asked my opinion about the various solutions for fixing valve recession on his 1982 R100. That is only 31 years old and way too new for me to know about.

Should he go with those welded up two piece valves?

What is the reputation of Randy Long on head work?

Is there a west coast place that does good work?

BMW valves seem to be OK, but are very expensive, there is a guy in the UK called Moorespeed, who sells some valves that he has specially made.......

The trick will be to find someone who is really good at replacing the seats, that the bit that can really go wrong.

Bum has quite a lot of stuff about valves, only issue I have about his site is that he is not always up to date with the latest developments on parts, assuming that latest is better?

West guy is Ted Porter at the Beemershop...he just did the head work on my /7. East coast guy would be Tom Cutter. Tom may actually farm the work out to Randy Long. Oak Okleshen could do them, but I think his work load is way down these days. I had Vech do my R25/2 engine and he sent the head to Memphis Motorwerks. I'm sure any of those options are fine...there may be a few more.

Kurt in S.A.

Duane

I had Randy do the seats and guides for me about 4 years ago. That's on an 82 R100. He's got a good rep in the airhead group around here. Oak had my heads first but I was impatient about getting them back and on the road. Since Oak had my heads for 2 months and was back-logged for another 3, I had him hand them back over and off to Randy they went. Had 'em back in a week.

The only thing I didn't want him to do on mine was to bead blast the heads like he said he was going to do.

He's got a small production line going for himself in his basement/machine shop. I understand a lot of the bigger name shops sub a lot of work to him on HD as well as BMW heads.

Remember that guy named Gunther from the /5 list? I think he was from southern indiana. He did my heads and I was very pleased.

Guenther Wuest

FAST by Guenther (WUMA Inc)
6891 W. U.S. Highway 150
Fredricksburg, IN 47120
1-812-472-3739

I had Randy Long do the valve job on my R100RT, and I'm very happy with his work. He has a great reputation with knowledgeable airhead mechanics in the upper midwest (Chicago, anyway).

There's also Dave Gardner (sp) at Recommended Service in San Francisco. He concentrates on Airheads and first gen K bikes. I thought you had recommended him a while back (5+ years), but my memory could be wrong. While I haven't had him do my valves, he did a good job on by final drive, for whatever that's worth.

What kind of valves are these guys using? Are they upgrading the seats on the '81 and newer bikes, or just replacing valves?

If I was doing a head refresh on an airhead, I would replace all guides and the exhaust valves and seats.

Exhaust valves do a lot of damage when they drop.