Keeping a BMW on the East Coast came with one catch I didn’t fully think through when I left the GS in Savannah: there’s no BMW dealer anywhere close. The options are Charleston (technically Ladson), Jacksonville (technically Orange Park), or all the way over in Atlanta (technically Roswell or Marietta). The closest of those is still a long day in the saddle just to sit in a service waiting room, and I was looking at 150 miles minimum for what amounts to an oil change. There had to be a better answer. Coastal Empire Moto could be that answer, but Kickstart gave me a more serendipitous answer.

The GS was creeping up on 36,000 miles. Normally, 36,000 is the big service with valves and all, but this bike came to me secondhand with a list of issues. I accelerated the schedule and had Roswell BMW do the big service at 30,000 (the 36,000 mile service, done early) to set a new baseline for the bike and hopefully eliminate surprises. That visit also took care of a leaky strut. (The clutch switch is still outstanding, and I’m not sure what that fix is yet.) That means the cadence on my East Coast GS is swapped, and this round was the small one. I can do this work myself, and I’ve done plenty of it out west. What I don’t have back east is the tools, the space, or an easy way to get rid of a few quarts of used oil.

I’ve been showing up to Kickstart, the vintage motorcycle club that meets every week at the Foxy Loxy, as part of building a riding community back east. One night I was talking about needing work done on the GS, and Gage offered to help on the spot.

Gage runs Meyer Motorwerkes, a small shop in Savannah doing maintenance, customs, and repairs. He’s big into BMW’s R 18 cruisers, meaning he’s got real BMW context—and a full set of Torx wrenches. Anyone who has worked on a BMW knows that’s half the battle.

Gage quoted me $225 for the service, but that included BMW oil, and my funemployed self didn’t want or need to pay for the roundel on the bottle. He offered me the option of bringing my own oil and filter, so I did that. It was supposed to be the easy part.

The filter was simple. I’m a K&N 160 guy, since that’s the SKU that fits the GS, and I like it because it has a nut fastened to the top of the filter, so no oil filter wrench is required.

The oil was another story. I wanted Shell 5W-40, and since no Walmart in town had it on the shelf, I typed “5W-40” into the search bar and ordered it online. Somehow, I ended up with 15W-40. Great. I took it back and ordered from Amazon instead as Walmart didn’t have it in stock. With Amazon a jug of 20W-50 showed up on my front doorstep. I returned it too. The third order was actually 5W-40 and was promised by 8 a.m., but 8 a.m. came and went without a box. I found an AutoZone near the house that had it in stock and returned the Amazon order when it finally showed up. Ugh. Online stores apparently don’t understand that 15W-40 and 20W-50 are not 5W-40. Note to self: just have Gage get the oil.

Gage’s shop is just over the Bryan County line. Getting there is a little tour of Savannah’s roads. I picked up the Truman Parkway, which runs as a proper freeway until it lets go of Truman’s name and dumps you onto Abercorn. From there, it turns into a suburban sprawl before it opens back up into a freeway again. Then the road ducks under Interstate 95, turns into Fort Argyle Road, and narrows down to a two-lane road. I was on the bike by 8 o’clock, and riding out in the cool of the morning made for a nice, early start.

Gage did all the work. I could have turned the wrenches with him looking over my shoulder, but that wasn’t really why I rode out there. I wanted the company, the conversation, and a little bit of community, and I got all three while the oil drained into his pan.

What neither of us expected was the oil filter. The GS and Gage’s R 18 use different oil filters and different filter wrenches, and Roswell BMW had put my filter on TIGHT at the 30,000 mile service. The R 18 wrench couldn’t get it off, and a standard strap wrench wouldn’t fit around it because of the crash bars. Gage ended up carefully muscling it off with a wrench that crunched the filter but secured it well enough to spin it off. Had I been doing this on my own, I would have said screw it, poured the dirty oil back into the bike, and headed for a BMW dealer, frustrated the whole way there.

The other part of the service that’s harder than it needs to be is the oil filler cap. The bike’s first owner put an Arashi billet cap on the GS, and it drives me nuts. It’s bling that you really don’t need on the bike, and all it does is make life harder for whoever is turning the wrench. Why not just keep it OEM? Maybe I’ll pull it someday and put on one you can turn by hand, like the caps on Japanese bikes.

When it was all said and done, Gage charged me $100 for labor.

Later on, I was washing the bike and noticed the turn signal pulling out of its mount. It had been that way for about 4,000 miles, ever since I dropped the bike in a neighbor’s driveway in North Carolina. At the time, I thought the only real damage was to my pride. Fudge! I’d been riding around with the turn signal awkwardly pushed out and hadn’t even noticed.

I mentioned it to Gage, and he showed up to the Halloween ride with tools in hand. He fixed it right there in the parking lot. No invoice required!

Gage is new at this, and he wanted to go the extra mile for me. He did, more than once, and that’s noted and appreciated. He offered to pick the bike up, fix it at my sisters, or host me at his place.

Gage builds customs too (the scrambled Sportster on his feed is a good one), and he’s leading rides out of town. The next one is a backroads ride to Pembroke on Saturday, November 14th, and all bikes are welcome.

I rode out there for the small service. I left with a mechanic I trust, a few new friends, and a turn signal that finally stays put.

Meyer Motorwerkes: @meyermotorwerkes on Instagram