In my recent post about buying the Bimota Tesi 3D, I noted that I still have my BMW HP2 Megamoto. But I haven’t kept you guys updated on the German, so let’s change that!
A couple of weeks after I bought my BMW HP2 Megamoto, Robin (the seller) texted asking for my address because he found a few extras that he wanted to send me. I was very eager to hear what was coming my way and it took most of my self-discipline not to ask for a list – I figured I could just wait for the surprise seeing as whatever was coming wasn’t part of the sale so it was all a bonus anyway. I wasn’t expecting much, so I was incredibly excited to open up a large box that included Barkbusters and SW-Motech tank bag, plus the factory accessory skid plate and cylinder guards!
How it started:
How it ended – I equipped the Barkbusters, cylinder guards, and skid plate:
Photo by Nathan May
As I noted in Part 1, one of the things that pushed me over the edge on buying the Megamoto was when my partner Vic asked, “who knows when you’d see another one come up for sale?” Seeing it had been years since I had seen a Megamoto in person, I figured the answer would be some sort of variation of “a long time.” But apparently the answer was…less than one week, because that’s how long it took for another HP2 Megamoto to show up at Iconic:
Mine’s on the left.
The second bike had a shaved seat and the cylinder guards, but I wasn’t feeling any envy as I liked the height of the stock seat and I already had the guards from Robin. However, there was one big difference that I immediately got jealous of – the second bike had an auxiliary fuel tank tucked inside the frame under the seat. See how the Ohlins shock is hidden? In my limited riding experience with my new bike, my biggest concern with the Megamoto as a commuter was the range provided by the 3.4 gallon fuel tank as I was typically looking for fuel at 100 miles (I speed a lot and don’t get great mpgs). So this seemed like the perfect thing to steal buy from the owner. First I had to figure out what it was and what the value was, and that wasn’t a difficult Google search considering these bikes are relatively rare (the US got just 107 Megamotos) so there aren’t a ton of aftermarket parts for it.
This tank was made by a gentleman named Markus Sedlmeir who worked for a supplier that built parts for BMW, and it’s informally known as the “Markus” tank. The tank is built out of 6mm polyethylene and the tank itself is an excellent piece of hardware. It’s 1.85 gallons, meaning it bumps the on board fuel capacity by roughly 50%. Problem solved, right? I made the owner of the second bike an offer that he accepted and then had one of the mechanics at Iconic swap out the Markus tank on to my bike. The tank comes with a mounting bar (deletes the passenger pegs, though there’s a solution to that) and an auxiliary fuel pump to get the good stuff into the main tank.
Refilling the Markus tank on my way up to Monterey for the Quail Motorcycle Gathering.
That all happened around November 2021, and my bike was ostensibly ready to go. It quickly became my go-to and I covered the first 1,000 miles within a couple of weeks.
The bike had 9,006 miles when I bought it.
In December, Nathan pointed out to me that Angeles Crest Highway was about to get a snowstorm and was likely to be closed off for the winter, so we snuck in one last run to Wrightwood (my favorite Sunday ride, if you’re local you should join me for it). Though we beat the major storm, there was still plenty of snow around to goof around with, and when I shared this photo on social media I said I was going to install heated grips. A buddy of mine is the Marketing Communications Manager at BMW Motorrad, and he left a comment saying “Are you just trying to will the Sport to be an Enduro?! 🥶”
I used that as an excuse to ask him if there were still any heated grips available for the bike, even though it was built almost a decade and a half ago. He had one of his colleagues at corporate search their internal system and he found out that there were plenty of heated grips out there, but only ONE heated grip controller left in the US in dealer inventory. After a couple of calls and a couple of days of waiting, I got myself the last new OEM heated grip switch for this generation of BMWs in the United States (the switch isn’t Megamoto specific, it’s for all BMWs of that time).
Old and boring.
New and exciting!
The new heated grips.
So I (and by I, I mean Daniel at Iconic) installed the grips and the switch…and nothing worked. Turns out that when you retrofit heated grips to a BMW of this generation that didn’t have them from the factory, you have to get the computer flashed as well. I called up BMW of Long Beach and they told me they could do it in an hour, so I went down to have them to take care of it. I have to admit, I felt a little silly riding down to a dealer on a day when it was 80 degrees to get heated grips set up, but such is life. Unfortunately, it ended up being a bit more difficult than LB BMW suggested.
The first time, I showed up thinking it would take an hour and I had scheduled a meeting 2 hours later. After 90 minutes, I asked what the status was because I needed to leave soon, and they said that they were having some issues and didn’t think they could get it done in time so they put it back together for me to make sure I could make it to my next meeting. The second time, they had suffered an electrical surge the night before and their computer wasn’t working.
The interior of Long Beach BMW Motorcycles
The third time was the charm, though. Heated grips, here we go!
With Robin’s old accessories thrown on, the extra fuel, and the heated grips, I finally felt like the Megamoto was set up for me.
Photo by Nathan May.
With that said, I’ve been desperately looking for some factory HP2 soft luggage but I keep striking out – if anyone of you has a lead on some, please let me know! I’ve still used it for a few long rides (Las Vegas, Monterey, etc), but I’d love to have some factory bags instead of throwing everything in a tail bag or in a backpack. We’ll see how it goes from here…