1985 BMW-Motorcycles Background Info
The 1985 BMW-Motorcycles Vibe
It's 1985, and BMW is officially done being "old school." While the traditional air-cooled R80 and R100 were still humming along, the "Flying Brick" K100 had arrived to prove that Germans could do high-tech liquid cooling better than anyone else. If you weren't wearing a padded leather suit and listening to synth-pop while carving through the Alps, were you even living? We've focused our database on the survivors that defined this transition, particularly the deep, metallic Blues that made those massive fairings look like they were carved out of a frozen lake.
Paint Health Check
Welcome to the dawn of the Peeling Era. In '85, BMW was leaning hard into the basecoat/clearcoat systems to get that high-gloss, premium finish for their flagship K-series. The problem? Those early clears were about as loyal as a fair-weather friend. After forty years of UV exposure and heat cycles, you're likely seeing "delamination." It starts as a tiny white edge around a stone chip on your gas tank or fairing, and before you know it, the clear coat is flaking off in sheets like a bad sunburn. If your metallic Blue is looking "cloudy" or starting to lift, the bond between the color and the clear has finally given up the ghost.
Restoration Tip
In this era, a stone chip isn't just a cosmetic nuisance; it's a structural threat to the rest of the finish. Seal your chips immediately. Because the clear coat on these mid-80s bikes tends to lift once air and moisture get underneath the "skin," you need to lock the edges down. Clean the area with a steady hand, dab your touch-up color into the void, and ensure you overlap the surrounding clear coat just slightly. This creates a mechanical seal that stops the delamination from spreading across the entire fairing. Catch it now, or you'll be stripping the whole bike down to the plastic by next season.