Boy, when it rains it pours. I of course own a 1987 k100rs that is starting to have issues. It was the limited edition with the black out rims/engine etc. Well, a friend today sent me a link of a 1987 k100rs (red) for sale. He is asking 5 grand. Seems high but he says the bike has only 23,000 klicks on it! Me being a bit cynical i can't beleive it. I am going to check the bike out tomorrow. So all of you great k owners, is if worth 5 grand for a 23 year old with only 23,000 klicks on it???

The ironic part is that the bike for sell is about 5 minutes from where i live. The history of the bike was purchased in Edmonton and only rode to work and back. For those that don't know canada, you would be lucky to get 6 or 7 months of riding weather there...if you were a fair weather rider. He purchased in 1998 and had a life change of what he wanted to do and hence didn't ride much.

again, thank you.

36000km, I assume, is hardly run in. It sounds great. I have no idea how to assess the bike with a history like that, but I suspect that all will become clear once you see it and compared it to yours.

Best of luck. I got my bike for $2500 + approximately $800 in repairs and preventative maintenance. It had 86,000km on the clock. I admit, it was superficial good looks that swayed me to part with my $$. However, I got lucky, she was in a very good condition for her age and km, probably because it was used as a long distance touring bike.

Nyssa,

5 K seems to be a fair price for a K100 with such low mileage.
Here in CDN, the average cost of a K bike is $4,500 to $5,000 and it had stayed the same for the last 6-7 years.
Mine (RT) was purchased for $2,500 + HST. After the rebuilt, new tires, new battery, paint job.... the total cost was bumped to about $5,700.

Thanks all for your help. I know the big factor in swaying my decision is replacent value for a brand new K. Gulp, i could drop 24,000 dollars pretty quickly. Plus i figure i was willing to spend 3 grand on new seals, water pump etc on my bike, so what is another couple of thousand to get something that should be in way better shape.

Based on what I have read on another forum I would not touch a brand new K with a ten foot pole.

I would suggest an older K even if you have to spend some money will give you the bike you need.

Interesting. Confess i have not read anything on the new K's as they may be pretty to look at, i can't afford them. But to able to get a bike same vintage as mine (heck the same bike almost) really intrigues. It is all about timing and it seems this deal has come up at the right time. Plus i can salvage mine for parts for later down the road. Or sell.

I managed to put 37000 (miles) on a 2005 K1200S in about 18 months with nary a failure of any component due to faulty build. The new owner, a Canadian mate of mine who stays in contact, has replaced an ignition coil in the total of 60000+ miles the bike has covered since (the bike has a US-spec speedo/odo). The only things done were the serial warranty replacement of the ring antenna (for the chipped key) and a petrol tank cap that failed because I broke it (I knew the dealership service personnel pretty well having worked for them). We saw a few of the new-series K get gearbox and clutch basket work, a few airboxes were replaced due to a failure to quickly return to idle upon chopping the throttle, and some of the very early models exhibited a similar final drive failure to some of the Oilhead RTs and others. Otherwise, having worked at BMW shops from 2000 until the Summer of 2008, I think they are as reliable as anything BMW has built. I would buy another one if they weren't so over-priced Down Under, but that's another story.

An '87 with 23000 miles or kilometres (in Canada I assume you mean kilometres)? I would suspect the odo. A lot of instrument clusters were replaced in the early days.

Two Wheels Better wrote:
An '87 with 23000 miles or kilometres (in Canada I assume you mean kilometres)? I would suspect the odo. A lot of instrument clusters were replaced in the early days.

By 1987, BMW had fixed the problems with the odometer. Only the 1984/85 odometers had a failure and had to be replaced.

Crazy Frog wrote:By 1987, BMW had fixed the problems with the odometer. Only the 1984/85 odometers had a failure and had to be replaced.

The GoreTex fix was in by '87 but the speedo on the K-bikes still continued to fail from time to time because of corrosion. It is still a possibility that the instrument is not original (and therefore the kilometers are not original). One way to find out is look inside the instrument cluster -- there is a date of manufacture stamped on the back. If it is later than the model year of the bike, it is a good chance that the instrucment cluster is a replacement.

My limited edition K100RS 1987 had the instrument cluster fail at 19,000 km. The other warranty job that has not been done on the bike i am looking at is the heat shield needed extra rivets to keep from rattling. Again, my K had the heat shield job done. Really, that was the only known warrant work i had done. Except for the piece of rubber that didn't make the front wheel seal, hence it leaked, and the put a new tire on. Pirelli's sure sucked!