When you get your first peek at Jason Adam’ BMW R860RR Rooney Special it’s hard to figure out what you’re looking at. It’s a home-built airhead rally bike based loosely on an old R65 engine, with a lot of tricks. The horizontally-opposed jugs betray its heritage as an airhead, but it sits on tall front and rear springs that are decidedly not German. There’s a rear drive that looks familiar, if a bit out of place, while a plastic tank and raw navigation tower clearly mean business. Two vertically positioned LED headlight clusters make you wonder just how far into the future the pilot can see with those power beams, which is ironic considering that the iron underneath goes back more than a few decades.
IT’s an airhead that looks like it’s built to deliver speed and take abuse, which is perfect because that’s exactly how Jason Admans uses it.
Those who know Jason will not be surprised by the unique assemblage of parts on this motorcycle. Ever since buying his first BMW, he has quietly pursued a self-taught mechanical degree in all-things airhead to support and unshakable habit for rally riding.
Jason got his start in stage rally by joining MAX BMW on a quest to South Carolina in 2007 for the first-ever “RallyMoto” competition at the Sandblast Rally. Amongst the field of oilheads, HP2s, and smaller displacement bikes from BMW and other marques, Jason’s Red and white R100GSPD separated itself and proved to be the crowd favorite. He rode the PD well, finished with a huge smile and a thirst for more.
Jason competed alongside MAX BMW teammates in subsequent RallyMoto events in the Eastern RallyMoto Cup series in 2007 and 2008. Then in October 2008, Jason was selected to join five other riders from the US to compete in the inaugural International GS Trophy in Tunisia. The US team took home gold.
In the years that followed, Jason continued to compete in the NASA Atlantic RallyMoto series on his signature GSPD. Stores and photos of Jason riding the only airhead in these rallies were distributed widely in MAX BMW eRiders and on popular online forums such as ADVRider.
By 2012, Jason’s reputation for rallying airheads had reached all the way down under and he received an unsolicited invitation to compete in the Australasian Safari Rally on a customer 1983 BMW R65 that would be loaned to him by its building, Paul Rooney. Rooney runs a BMW airhead skunkworks in Oz whose website proudly claims to create “no-nonsense machines where form is the servant of function.”
The statement appealed to Jason. In a rally, it’s just the rider and his bike. If you have a crash or breakdown during a stage, you can’t accept outside assistance and keep going, you need to fix what’s wrong. You either use your own parts, tools, and ingenuity or you throw in the towel. For Jason, building the lightest and most nimble airhead rally machine that could take the abuse of a rally and would be simple to repair and maintain would mean starting from scratch, and doing it himself.
With his sights set on competing in the multi-day Baja Rally in 2013, Jason worked with Tony Beatty in the MAX BMW Troy, NY store to transform an R60/6 into a café-dirt-bike dubbed “The Boxxer of Hammers.” Jason successfully campaigned the Boxxer of Hammers in the Baja and Cortez Rallies that year but quickly discovered that the bike was a bit underpowered to truly be competitive.
Jason’s riding and navigation skills had improved to the point that he felt it was time to commit to a new, more expert-level build. This time he would start with a frame from Paul Rooney.
It’s easy to order a frame from Australia. It’s another thing to get it shipped and moved through customs. When the chrome-moly frame finally arrived at Jason’s home in the Hudson Valley of New York in 2016, he knew he had made the right choice. The naked box frame is a thing of brutal beauty. It is light and stiff and has a unique feature: an integrated air box that saves weight and space. Jason hunted down a 650 cc donor motor, desirable for having a footprint that is a couple of inches narrower than more recent airhead engines. The 650 is also known to be a bit underpowered. But Jason being Jason, he had a couple of ideas to give it more oomph, including an upgrade of pistons and cylinders that effectively turned the motor into an 860 short stroke. Jason worked with Phil Cheney, MAX BMW’s resident airhead guru, to select the best parts to deliver both performance and weight-savings.
The rear swing arm and drive shaft that came from an R1100 GS mated nicely with a 5-speed gearbox and provided some extra length to mount an Ohlins rear shock with abundant travel. On the front, Jason went for motocross suspension, with beefy tubes from a Suzuki DRZ 400E. Jason followed the Rooney mantra of “function over form” and did his best to assemble the bike with minimum tools so he would know exactly what he needed to carry to perform field repairs in a rally.
All of this work mind you, was being done in Jason’s part-time in an unheated barn workshop behind his house. He continued to rally the Boxxer of Hammers while R860RR’s final form took shape. In the spring of 2017, a full decade since his first rally, Jason debuted the R860RR at Sandblast. The bike ran well enough, but it still wasn’t perfect, and Jason kept making adjustments to make the bike better for subsequent rallies in the Sonoran Desert and in the Laurentians in Quebec that year.
By the end of the rally season, it was evident that there was still some engine and electric witchcraft that needed to be performed on the R860RR. Jason felt that he needed some help to take the project beyond where he could go and Max offered Jason lift space in the Brookfield, CT shop to finish the project. In addition to having a warm and bright space to work for the winter, Jason would also have access to Phil Cheney’s eyes and ear, MAX BMW’s extensive parts inventory, and all of the tuning and diagnostic equipment needed to dial in the bike before Sandblast 2018.
As any rally will tell you, the race to the starting line is almost as hard as the race to the finish. Jason and Phil worked ferociously until the very last minute, setting timing, making adjustments, testing the bike on the dyno to evaluate exhaust gasses and adjusting the suspension. Jason was able to give the bike just a short 20-minute road test before the final prep: checking the valves, re-torquing the heads, and changing the break-in oil. When he rolled it into the trailer to South Carolina, it was an easy push; the 860 cc airhead weighed in at only 361 lbs. with an empty tank.
Once again, Jason’s choice of mount attracted plenty of interest in the Parc Exposé and on the course at Sandblast. The R860RR not only held together through all 7 stages but carried Jason to an impressive 4th place finish in the Motorcycle Heavy class, 11th overall and the 1st among the BMWs, including a handful of HP2s.
The Sandblast Rally was a great shakedown for the R860RR and Jason is looking forward to a full schedule of international rallies where he can really put the bike and himself to the test. Jason credits his close work with MAX BMW and Phil Cheney for getting the bike into its rally-ready condition and humbly insists that anyone can do the same with the right partner.
If you are interested in working with a MAX BMW technician to complete your project, contact either the MAX BMW North Hampton, NH (603.964.2877) or the MAX BMW Brookfield, CT (203.740.1270) Service Department to discuss what we can do for you.
