How To: remove the wheels on a BMW F650CS

I read somewhere that BMW actually bragged about how easy it was to take off the wheels (to enable a tire replacement, for example) on their F650CS motorcycles, which were, after all, aimed at people who were less hard-core riders and more dabblers in or utter newbies to the sport. 

Let’s see if BMW were right about that…

Step 1: find the hex nut. I’m not kidding: this is the first vehicle I’ve ever owned where the manufacturer decided to hide the rear axle nut behind some fancy plastic. 

Simply pry the plastic shield off with a screwdriver, however, and you discover…

…a metal retaining clip holding in place the biggest-ass hex nut I’ve seen in my life. My calipers measured it at 54.5mm. 

2. Use that same screwdriver to take off the retaining clip


3. Now you need to get that pesky muffler out of the way. For this, you will need an external torx socket, that is a socket version of the torx wrench instead of the star-shaped Allen wrench that I use for all of the other BMW fasteners. My hardware store doesn’t sell these individually, so I had to pick up a set. Anyway, I needed an E12 to get the bugger to come off:

After that, there is a conventional 15mm hex nut (I know - what was BMW thinking?!?) that clamps the muffler to the exhaust pipe.

4. Now here you have two options. First, you can use the hard-rubber 56mm socket adapter that BMW supplies with the bike and purchase a 27mm socket to go with it (at least, none of the socket sets I have in my garage include a 27mm):

I don’t have a picture of me removing the tire using this combination of hardware because I couldn’t get it to budge the hex nut. 

Alternately, and the alternative I ultimately ended up going with, you can purchase a big-ass 55mm socket from Northern Tool and a 1/2” (female) to 3/4” (male) adapter to fit it to the breaking bar and torque wrench you doubtless already have if you own any bikes from sane manufacturers who use standard hardware:

5. The next part is easy, relatively speaking. Find something to lift the middle of the bike up on (I used an old wooden step stool I had built when my boys were little) and then slide the wheel off the axle, being careful to note the arrangement of the various washers as they come off first:

Well, only five steps so far, and only two of them required the acquisition of new hardware…I suppose that’s beat-worthy. Now on to the front wheel:

6. Use a T40 Torx wrench (mine are shaped like little Allen wrenches) to loosen (but not remove entirely) the two axle-clamping bolts on the front forks:

Loosen them until you can easily slide the front left fork a mm or two. 

7. Remove the front axle retaining bolt with an ordinary 17mm hex socket (again, BMW, your nonstandard hardware department is slacking!):

8. Slide the axle out the other side

9. Remove the front wheel and store the little axle nubs (not sure what they are properly called) somewhere safe until you need to reverse this whole mess:

That’s it. Your bike should now look about like this: