1974 BMW R60/6 -

IndieSol

"This one goes to eleven." -Nigel Tufnel
I was lucky enough to pick up this barn fresh 1974 R60/6 a few days ago. An old airhead has been on my short list ever since my love affair with older bikes first started, so when I saw one I could afford pop up on Craigslist, and the ad was only like five minutes old, I jumped on it.

r601.jpg


It's actually in pretty good shape, runs, and aside from the front signals, is complete. It also came with Krauser hard bags, a Clymer manual (of course I'd prefer a factory manual) and the original sales brochure from a dealer in Seattle.

My plan is to more or less just fix what needs to be fixed in order to ride it safely, make a few small changes, and ride it. A lot. I'm going to start at the front tire and work my way back, but I'm going to leave the engine in the frame.

Changes:
Norman Hyde "M" bars
Epco Peashooter exhaust
Paint the tins black with white striping (as nature intended).
Possibly an earlier headlight bucket with integrated instruments

It'll be a couple weeks before I can really start ordering parts for it, but I'll be cleaning up some of the easy stuff in the mean time. This afternoon I took a wire wheel to the latches on the krauser hard bags and got rid of most of the rust shown in the picture. The latches function properly now and, while they don't look perfect, they're presentable and show a nice patina. I'm going to look deeper into how to properly restore the bags and see what's involved. The inside straps are trashed, so I may have to get creative there.

I also plan on taking some steel wool to the front spokes and rim, and cleaning some of the oxidation off the front hub/drum. Any suggestions would be appreciated on the hub/drum portion.
 
Hi!

I've had my hands on a few Airheads and using some xxxx steel wool on the spokes and rims will be ok, the hubs will need to be soda blasted. The fork legs will clean up with polish and a few rags.

Once you get to your engine cases, be very careful not to ruin the casting grain. Once again, soda blasting is your friend.

It took a while but I turned this:

JUNE-6-06001.jpg



Into this:

REDMONDRALLY2010120-2.jpg
 
Thanks, Yinz and all. I'm so stoked about the whole thing. Unfortunately it caused me to spend more than I really wanted to right before Christmas, so I sold my triple yesterday, but I wasn't really all that into it anyways. I'd rather have an RD or CB400F than the S3, to be honest.

When I got the Beemer, the wiring in the headlight was a bit of a mess due to the previous owner's removal of the touring fairing. I was able to get that cleaned up the other night and got the headlight to work as it should. I didn't realize these bikes had a "flash" setting on the headlight, as well as off, low beam and high beam. Kinda neat. I'm not sure the headlight I have for it is correct, though, as it really doesn't want to mate up easily with the bucket. That, or else I'm missing some hardware.

Still missing front signals (ordering this week), but once those arrive I suspect they'll work fine, assuming the flasher is good.

Since I know the bike runs, but it won't be running again for a bit, I went ahead and drained the tank while I was in the garage working on it.

Plans for the next couple weeks are to clean up the front end. Steel wool to the rims and spokes, soda blast and paint the front hub and fork legs, new front tire, new brake shoes, fork gaiters and seals, change fork oil, new grips and cables, new rubber trim rings for the gauges, clean up or replace rusted bolts, etc. Also going to repaint the Krauser cases and hit the insides with some bed liner.
 
IndieSol said:
I also plan on taking some steel wool to the front spokes and rim, and cleaning some of the oxidation off the front hub/drum. Any suggestions would be appreciated on the hub/drum portion.

When I did mine on my CB360 i used a mix of WD-40 and Simple Green Cleaner with a toothbrush. Got that oxidation right off there!
 
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