BMW R1100 Turbo

R1100S and RT and GS Turbo Systems

Poor R1100S, a lousy 86 rear wheel hp, and a tail-mounted, wannbee Ducati, license plate warming muffler. Twin plug, single plug, "Replica" paint, carbon fiber bits etc....All foo, foo, crap for a bike with no power. When they say it's not about the money...It's about the money. When you haven't got the power...It's still about the power.

RB Racing gives you a power correction with 240 hp worth of an intercooled, water injected turbo. For you incremental types, you can dial down the power to a manageable 135 hp and keep your fear factor in check. Hey, it's still got a shaft drive so you won't be running 220mph! We like to run way over 200 but not everyone does.

Front mounted Boost Master wastegate controlled by a handlebar mounted pneumatic boost controller. Dial up your courage. Ceramic coated merge collector turbo header has dual egt ports for our manadatory Orca Turbo Dash.

Charge cooler sheds heat and breaks up directional flow from turbocharger. Downstream are four injectors and two water injection nozzles. New electronics control the fuel and water injection.

No one is going to see the turbo as it's under the bike. All anyone will see is the end of your tail pipe anyway...Unless you just like to park and talk and bask in the glory of your new toy.

The Jig is Up!

This is most of the fixtures required to make a R11 Turbo kit. Actually there are about twice this many, not including the cnc maching setups that we use. Figure that we redesigned this kit six times from 1994 to present you could throw away about five piles of steel this large...not to mention barrels full of parts we sent to the scap heap. Don't ask how much money we spent because it is way too painful to think about.

Wannas

After doing this turbo stuff for over thirty years we have encountered all sorts of interesting people. People who contact us generally fall into three classifications...Wannaknows, Wannabes, and Wannabuys. The first two outnumber the last one by about 1000 to 1. Factor in the lost time we have spent in dealing the 999 and we could have been tooling down the Cote D'Azur in a new Ferrari, far, far, away from telephones and endless people either trying to pry information out of us, or just trying to satisfy their endless curiosity. In short, we only deal with the third category these days.

Raw Parts

Takes a lot of fixtures and sub fixtures to make this part accurately. Don't ask us to buy one as it is only sold with the kit. You don't want to know what it costs in final form factoring in shop time, wages and administrative matters like coating, laser cutting, welding supplies, employee training etc.

High Stakes

You're sitting at the Baccarat table in Wendover keeping your steely eyes on the Mormons who've sneaked over from Salt Lake to be naughty, and those Bonneville groupies who are eyeing your pile of chips see a good time coming. Push that pile of water jet cut copper gaskets out and bet the farm. It's your lucky night. That's $1,000.00 in copper turbo gaskets. It does get expensive.

More $1,000.00 Days

Customers just think we just stop whatever we are doing and go build them a turbo system for their R Bike. It doesn't work that way. Oil systems are particularly ornery and chew up months of development in prototyping and then even more time in the refinement and testing phases. At that point you get to take your sample parts to your hose fabricator and hand over a four digit pile of your hard earned dollars just so you can have some parts in stock. And there are a lot more parts in a turbo system.

Some More Parts

These are a few of the parts that are in a BMW R1100RT Turbo Kit. Just a few. Bending , fabrication, ceramic coating, cnc machining, laser cutting, and many hours of tig welding. Procedures, documentation, training....tens of thousands of dollars tied up so we can go fast. Of course, if you sit in a cubicle, and order parts from China for Walmart you have little appreciation for this.

R1100/1150 Intercooler

Well, you start with 20 pieces of aluminum. Cut, machine and otherwise make them into some specific shape. Then you start welding. You best keep cut patterns, sample parts and notes or you will not be able to duplicate it again. We make a prototype like the one below, test it over several thousand miles and if everything is OK we go into limited production. A lot of hours and quite expensive.

Gets complicated. Holes for injectors, holes for water injection, holes for injector hold downs. Cut, weld, debur, heliarc, machine, drill, tap...it never ends. We tested this prototype for several thousand miles.

Water Injection 1

Water injection is mandatory on all BMW turbocharger kits. We make an aluminum water reservoir that fits in the license plate location. Here it is trial fitted to a R1100RT and a R1100S prior to being hard anodized. A clear hose is used as a sight window to check water level. Capacity is slightly above one quart. On R1100/1150 turbo kits the water is injected into a common area, in the intercooler, between each inlet runner. Two water nozzles are used and are staged for low and high boost levels.. It is completely pre-planned and there are no adjustments to make. The RSR Pro-440 230 psi pump mounts on base of reservoir.

Water Injection 2

Hard anodized water injection reservoirs for our turbo kits. Lots of cutting, deburring, cleaning, welding, and machining to get these ready. Lathes, mills, heliarc, large buffers, drills, taps and employees. Money, money, money....Accountants cringe. The IRS doesn't believe you spend all that money on R&D until they audit you.

License plate mounted. Integral 230 psi pump assembly. Stainless steel hardware. Level sight window. Quick release stainless steel filler plug. Hard anodized for water and water alcohol or water methanol corrosion resistance. Whatever it takes. We know what it takes. Wannabes and Wannaknows whine endlessly. Wannabuys buy. Someone goes fast.

Dual stage water injection. Solenoids mounted on powder coated support bracket for BMW R1100/1150RT. Endless details for trouble free performance.

Dual stage water injection pressure switches. Primary nozzle activates at 4 psi and the secondary joins in at 8 psi when things get serious. R1100/1150RT beneath left panel. Relays for these are secreted into the oem fuse box. Switches only see boost, not vacuum/boost.

RSR AIC400 Additional Injector Controller

We preprogram the fuel curve for the two additional injectors with our RSR AIC400. About 2000 points to program. We do it for you.

Turbo Dash...Ultimate Instrumentation for the Turbo

Water injection activation is indicated on our Orca Turbo Dash. 30 L.E.D.s display 30" Hg to 30 psi of boost (3 Bar). Three digits display manifold pressure in Bar, 0.00 to 3.00. Two type K fast-acting thermocouples read exhaust gas temperature. Three buttons: high recall from memory; display dimming; and reset to clear memory. Two additional L.E.D.s indicate the two stage water injection system. Mandatory on all BMW turbo kits.

This may be your hobby but it is our business and in a business sense, turbos make little sense. That we choose to do them is our choice and it has nothing to do with money. The R&D and the tooling and the testing is money that you never get back...Never! Never! Never! No one appreciates what you do and almost no one understands what is involved. We have done enough free work and R&D to pay for a mansion in Beverly Hills. It is our choice. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

We get calls from people who want to know if the exhaust they have will work with the turbo (think about it). We have people who call and tell us they will be happy with 200hp all the time (?). We have people call and tell us they are coming by for an installation...they don't ask, they just announce it. We tell them no and they tell us we are assholes. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

We have worked with a number of customers on prototypes. Several have announced they were not going to pay us any money because "RB Racing" was going to get rich off the prototype. We offered any of these people to simply pay us for our time and parts and we'll let them have the business. For some reason they always decline the offer. Something about them getting their regular paycheck without any risk or investment. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

Over 600 BMW turbos and 1500 turbos for more than 25 platforms over the years. Thousands and thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars invested. Computer code, flow benches, test equipment, custom software, electronic circuitry design, specialized castings, cnc and manual machinery, fixtures, specialized fabrication and welding equiment, training of employees etc etc. Got to love turbos if you want to play with them.

Be prepared. This is serious stuff. Know your responsibility. These aren't phony carbon fiber tank protectors.

You meet the nicest people...A bit of history over 30 years

Built a turbo for a “friend” of a friend.. He had to go on a trip with it. He shows up late and tells you he’ll pay you when he gets back. Feeling cooperative you send him on his way. Two weeks later you get a call. He says the turbo “burned up” and he’s 2000 miles away. You airfreight him a replacement turbo. You never see him again.

Customer shows up to pick up his turbo and informs you he is not going to pay for it because he is now your “salesman” and you should be so ever grateful for the business he is going to bring you. You tell him the price just went up $200.00. He protests and you tell him if he opens his mouth one more time the price goes up another hundred. Six hundred dollars later beyond the original price he pays cash. You see him periodically over the next four or five years. He is now your best friend.

You set up a remote oil system on a race bike and the customer burns up two turbos, which you replace for free. You later find out he killed the turbos in the burnout when he never turned on the electric oil feed pump. He also runs off with an $1100.00 custom wheel you lent him for a race. He sells the bike and never pays you. Oh yeah, he worked in law enforcement.

You build a turbo for a guy and he up and leaves the country after giving you a deposit. 18 months later he shows up and asks for his turbo. You tell him to come in two weeks and pick up the parts. He calls constantly threatening you with all sorts of dire things. . We tell him to bring cash. He does. He then says nothing fits. Turns out he pieced together a bike out of a frame that was designed for another engine. Flea market (stolen) parts. We spend 12 hours cutting and adapting things to make it work for no charge. He goes away then comes back and says it “won’t start”. We look at his throttle bodies and they are not synched. We put light cable pressure on them and the bike starts instantly....he asks why and we tell him “the bike does not like him”. He goes away. He calls up threatening us with all sorts of dire consequences if we don’t give him something for free that he hasn’t paid for. He insults a female at our business. We tell him he can have the part for free if he disappears and never contacts us again. He agrees. We send the part. Two weeks later he calls us up and tells us he has set a speed record. We ask him if he understands what the word “never” means. He goes on a multi-year effort to tell everyone the parts we made were his design and coordinates a disinformation campaign against our business.

You build a turbo kit and another firm says they will buy 100 of them. You have one year of R&D and gear up to make the systems. They order one, then two, then 25...They neglect to pay you the full amount. The orders stop and there are excuses. You get a call from a fabricator you know who says “I think I have your stuff here that I’m supposed to copy”. You drive over and look. Sure enough it’s yours. You tell him to go ahead and copy it. You go lock the customer in his office and rip everything off his desk and get your check. They fail and call you up two years later saying they shouldn’t have ripped you off and now they want to work with you again. You say sure and go pick up a bike they provide. You disassemble the bike in a hundred pieces and tell them to come pick it up.

You work with the same customer for 15 years and build him two specialized race turbos. One deal was if the kit was sold RB Racing got “x” dollars. As long as it was raced or not sold no payment was required. Client sold the kit. We went collect. Client said the deal, as ”he remembered” was if he sold “the bike” he would pay us and since he sold just the kit he wasn’t going to pay us since the bike was not sold. We increased our prices 50% that day on items he was buying. He just passed it on. We got the message and removed the other parts from a 206 mph bike that also were not paid for.

Customer wanted us to do something for free which involved more than 30 days of labor (turbo related). We refused unless he agreed to pay. He paid a lawyer at least 5x what we asked for to attempt to force us to do the work for free. We never did and he got zip except being stuck with his lawyer’s fees. Much aggravation.

You prototype out a turbo on a new bike and give the customer a 50% discount. You call him up so he can fly in and pick it up. As soon as you put down the phone the fax activates and a four page document comes through informing you that he is not going to pay for the items as “You are going to make money selling them”. You call him back and tell him the bike is now on the street with the keys in it and you are “going home”. He paid. He also declined to pay you the $30,000.00 in development costs you incurred. Seems he really did not want to be in a money losing business.

Customer who owns a motorcycle shop brings a bike by for you to look at. You agree to see if the turbo can be done. You give him a price if it turns out the parts can be made. You make the parts and tell him to pick up the bike and the parts. He now wants them installed which was not in the quote and on top of this it turns out there is no money because he doesn’t own the bike and the “owner” is out of the country. The bike has no plates. No one pays. Owner of bike shows up with a tatooed bodyguard and wants his “turbo”. You tell the owner and the tatooed bodyguard to get bent. We finally get 1/2 of the money for the parts and give them 1/2 of the parts and the bike is sold to some third party who also won‘t pay the balance. Bye bye on a flatbed.

Customer burns up a turbo on a bike we did not build nor make the turbo for. We rebuild the turbo and put on a new fuel pump. Customer refuses to pay. He takes us to small claims court and the Judge asks him why since "he owes RB Racing money and why is he there wasting the court’s time”. Nine years later, and a $300.00 bill not paid, we gave the bike to a friend who parted it out. Thirteen years later the guy’s son shows up asking for the bike.

We build a turbo for a customer and offer him a 50% discount as it was a new prototype. We design the parts, the fixtures, bend 50 sets of the parts and take two sets through final finishing. Customer flies in,approves the design, then refuses to pay unless he “has the bike for a time and is completely happy”. We take the parts off the bike and it sits. He has other bikes and flies in from out of state three times, each time to inform us of his “conditions”. We had made two complete systems, and spent three months of design time and had no payment from customer. Customer then calls and offers to "loan us $10,000.00" so we can finish his system. He tells us he will send us $10,000.00, we will finish his bike, return the $10,000.00 and then he will fly in and if he is completely happy he will pay us the original estimate. We tell him to get bent. We move the business to a larger facility which costs a lot of money and ask the customer to make payment. He refuses but says he will come down and help us find a new location if we finish his bike. We tell him to get bent again. Customer flies in again and we beat 25% out of him after three hours of yelling. Time passes and three and one half years later we reveive a check representing the balance of the 50%. Customer calls and asks if he had paid the amount in the first place would he have had his "turbo". We answer in the affirmative. In the meantime the turbos have become obsolete and we scrap the parts...all 50 sets. For the newer turbos we lasercut all new turbo flanges, bend new parts, make several dozen new fixtures and go through four redesigns to insure most of the parts fit various years and models. We go out and buy five BMWs to not have to deal with people like this customer. We design, finish and install new parts on the bike. We spend tens of thousands of dollars in labor, parts, and design time. We ask the customer to send us an updated registration so we can start and run the bike without risk of being towed by the police. He agrees then sends us an email saying he won't. We just go back to work. The last time we checked we thought it was our business. He finally sends in the registration months later and we're busy on other things. He can wait.

A customer says he’s going to build his own turbo and wants us to order him a turbo. He chooses the wrong one. We order it anyway. One year later he can’t get it done by conning his “friend” to do the work for free so he asks it to build it “his way”. We do. He then sees our design and wants it changed to "our way". We did. He also took it upon himself to take down the license plate numbers of three out of state bikes we had in our shop. He threw a fit when he saw we were working on bikes like his but not his exclusively. He tracked these people down and told them RB Racing was tearing up their bikes doing wheelies and loaning them to customers (the bikes were never operated) for the sole purpose of spite. The people came in unannounced and pulled their bikes and tried to sue us for not finishing their bikes even though they had not paid. They also wanted additional work done for free and even told us they would take our fixtures back to their state and build our parts for us. They announced they were going to “own” our business.They got nothing from us. We were out eight weeks labor and fabrication. We let the original customer ride his bike around the block and then disabled it as he was moving to Tennessee. He was amazed how “perfect” it was. We told him he could have the missing parts when he owned up to what he had done and pay for any losses we had. He was a coward and did nothing. He sold the bike to a friend of ours who paid us for the missing parts, getting a $17,000.00 motorcycle for $6,000.00.The bike ran 210 mph on it’s first pass at Maxton. The seller was there to see “his Bike”. Mike Chestnut.

Customer brings us a bike but neglects to pay the agreed amount. He attempts to sue us to do the work without paying the amount we agreed on. We spend several thousand dollars for an attorney and the customer gets nothing and is charged a large cancellation fee.

Customer does not pay us for a turbocharger job but wants to get his bike. We show up on a Saturday and the customer is there with a police car. We ask the police what the deal was and they said the guy wanted to pick up his bike but he was afraid we might harm him. We show the police the invoice that was not paid and the Police go after the guy for calling in a false report. We let the guy take the bike anyway having him sign a statement he was to send us “X” dollars per month. The Police witnessed the statement. We got one money order via express mail from the guy for $25.00. The guy lost job after job and we simply wrote the whole affair off.

We built a Turbo for a customer who gave us a $1,200 deposit on a $5,000.00 item. He sold the pink to a third party for $7,000.00 who came to pick up “his turbo” that we had finished. We let him drive it around as we had already dealt with the customer and then we took the bike back for safekeeping. The third party then told us the bike was being sold to some rich fool for $18,000.00 and would we deliver it. Not unless we got paid. The third party decided to take the bike back stock. We removed the turbo parts. He could not win “big” so he did not want to pay us the balance. We decided to also take back some parts from him that he had set numerous records with that were not paid for. He came back years later and asked what it would take to get the parts back. We showed him the box and the parts and quoted him $4,500.00. He said that was “about what he thought”. We haven’t seen him since.

You build a BMW turbo for a customer that requires the customer do some fabrication. He sends you a picture with the oil drain line looped up in a giant “U” plus other issues that shows he absolutely has no clue. He then wants you to buy his old bike that had been sitting dead for 5 years plus get his money back. We offer to install the kit if he brings us the bike. He doesn't. Get real.

A few out of 1500+ turbo systems but it’s enough.

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For these and a dozen other reasons you are not getting your bike in our shop. We will sell you the parts but we no longer, after 30 years of this, care about the dirty details of your life, nor do we care about your motives. You may be too weird for us. You may be just fine. Our parts are good and you can order them if you have the money. You can get them right away. They are in stock. They are the best. We are not your “Bro” and you have to realize it’s your show. We limit our involvement to people we have known for 15-20 years or more. We are not going to look over our shoulders to see if that knife you are eating your steak with is going to end up in our back. We lead. The “follow me” motto of the US Army Officer assumes with some certainty his men will follow. We’ve been there and know in that situation the mission will be done. We do not know if you will follow and we assume, for safety and peace of mind that you will not.

A longterm friend, a vet, needed help to go fast. We spend many tens of thousands of dollars on his project and he never asks for anything. Nor do we. No questions. Everyone going the same direction.

Grow up. You are on your own journey. We have ours and we are on our path alone, have our own projects, and do not need company. Install the parts yourself if you are competent or pay a shop to do so.

If this is not acceptable or you do not understand our position there are others out there who will happily take your money. You can drag them along for the ride.

Over the years we gave a lot of people enough rope and treated them well. There seems to be about one idiot per year who shows up full of bubbling enthusiasm and a hidden agenda. For us it is a business and we limit our enthusiasm to the manufacture of the parts and to our pursuit of excellence in design and function. Best keep your agenda and rope for others, not us.

Nothing personal. Just business.