Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

~ 00 0') ,....; On the left. a rIIW CrllnItaheft forging; on the right. a crllnksheft after automatic machining. The asaembly line at BMW's West Berlin fec:tory handles K100 Fours and Opposed Twins at the ..me time. The K 100 engine underwent 10.000 hours of dyno testing before going into production. By Dev Dvoretsky There have been many changes at BMW's Spandau factory in West Berlin over the past decade the most noticeable being the increase in automation. The last time I visited the Spandau factory was in 1971. Then, 450 workers - mostly migranl Yugoslavs and Turks - were lurning out 35 Series 5 Boxer twins a day, girls were pin-striping the fuel tanks by hand and the bosses were talking of expanding the factory to provide an ultimate 40,000 a year production. Ten years later, the workforce had more than quadrupled, production had reached ISO a day (32,000 a year), the girls were still pin-striping the fuel tanks - and the BMW board back at the Munich headquarters secretly considered geuing out of the falling motorcycle market altogether! Today, almost $140-rnillion and three years later, bike production at the forme~ wartime aero-engine faclory is nearly 160 a day and rising, the girls are still pin-striping the Boxer tanks and fairings by hand - and the bosses are confidently predicting they'll reach a daily production of 200-plus a day (45,000 a year), by the end of 1985. And, no doubt, when they do, those dexterous ladies wiJI still be doing their extraordinary accurate task by hand! By then too, a new paint shop will haNe been commissioned, opening the final boule-neck and allowing an increase in production of the machine voted "Bike of the Year" in five countries - the KJOO. Already Kloo production has outstripped that of the (Wins and accounts for 18,000 of the current 32,000 a year total production. By the end of 1985, K-series production alone should have reached the 27,000 to 30,000 mark - and that figure could include a smauering of the K75 three cylinder 750s now expected to be unveiled to the press later this year and released sometime in 1985. There were signs they were well on the way when I spoued a rackful of three cylinder 120 degree crankshafts during my tour of the factory. BMW executives reckoned these were for prototype testing, bu t I counted nearly a dozen crankshafts. For a company BMW's size, that's a lot of prototypes... The 750cc triple will no doubt be a relatively light machine - at least when compared against the current crop of Japanese 750s - and may even be used as the basis of a Formula One/Endurance racer by the factory. If so, then it will almost certainly have a four-valves-per-cylinder head that has its development background in Formula Two car racing engine desigq. On top of that, the horizontallyinclined Kloo four cylinder engine itself is likely to be destined for a four-wheeler of some sort. Speculation is that it may either be fiued to a small BMW car yet to be unveiled, or supplied to an outside constructor. Though the massive investment in West Berlin had been subsidized by generous government tax incentives, the Kloo Four and the expensive machines that build it will have to be amortized with other uses. So far, annual turnover is still less than the 140 million investment during the past four years. Already one third of Spandau's 18,000 strong workforce is dedicated to producing BMW car parts - such as disc brakes and manifolds. The rest are gradually changing from unskilled assembly workers to become expensive skilled mechanics. They have to keep the factory working. So far, automation is mainly concentrated on building the motorcycle engines with computerized numerical controlled (CNC) tools which have been developed specifically for BMW. These machines are currently operating at half their capacity about 100 KlOOs a day and around 60 twins. _ Machines like the mighty Wiederman, with its 156 automated tools, bore and machine the lower crankcase with uncanny and extreme accuracy measured in microns. Many more machines of similar exactitude made in Germany, the United States and Britain d.o similar jobs. Fully-automatic machines bore all the boh holes. beering holes. and oil pe...geweya in Crllnkceaea. Outside suppliers provide most of the castings - like the crankshaft forgings - which on arrival at Spandau are left in the care of machines to be machined, balanced and even xrayed for any weakness. Balancing is no longer left to the operator to decide but to a computerized robotic device that not on Iy gives an ultrafine mirror finish to each bearing surface and drive tooth, but indicates that it needs to be returned to the balancer for the final touch. Valve seats and valve guides are cooled in liquid nitrogen at -338° F and then automatically pressed into cylinder heads. In assembly a machine tests valve clearances. The one-time electro-plating division, which along with the old Hall Five and new Hall Six have been vastly

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