Vintage BMW Motorcycle Owners

1966 R60/2 , or R50/2 is more in the value of your plot

Hello again, thank you for the reply

I was searching Google the other day, and found the name R60 as well but I had to be sure.

Oh, if I may ask, what is the difference between the R60/2 and R60US?

Thanks again!

The R60 from 1956-1960 and R60/2 from 1961-1969 have an Earles-type front fork. Earnest Earles was a Brit who patented this design, and it was used on a number of European brands' bikes in the 1950s and 60s. Instead of telescopic forks, it has solid legs that come down behind the front wheel, and a full swingarm that goes out to the axle. There are shock absorbers from the axle to the fork legs, near the steering head.

The R60US, poduced in 1968 and 1969, has conventional telescopic forks.

The Earles forks have a number of advantages: they are robust, and so they are particularly good if you want to mount a sidecar (in fact, BMW did not put sidecar mounting lugs on the US models because they felt the telescopic forks were not up to it).

For the period, mounting real shock absorbers gave a much more controlled ride than was available with the primitive telescopics.

Telescopics also have the property that, under heavy braking, they shorten dramatically as they telescope. This shortens the effective wheelbase of the bike and its "trail" or "caster", and steepens the effective steering head angle. These changes make a bike much more "twitchy". The Earles design can be engineered to have any amount of fork "dive" desired, including zero and even negative values. BMW's implementation has a slight negative value and so the /2 bikes actually rise slightly under braking. This keeps the bike's neutral steering and allows heavier use of the front brake.

The knock on the Earles fork is that it is much heavier than a telescopic; it doesn't turn as quickly and requires more effort. It also inherently has much more unsprung weight, the inertia of which keeps the front tire from following road irregularities as closely as a telescopic fork bike. And because it doesn't respond so acutely as the telescopics do, riders used to telescopics say that the Earles doesn't supply any feedback about their braking.

Although BMW invented the modern form of the telescopic forks in 1935 with the introduction of the R12 model, they have constantly been developing solutions that may be better. Although BMW went back to conventional telescopics in 1968, when they came out with the "Oilhead" series in 1993, it had a new fork design, the "Telelever", which includes a light A-arm, and has characteristics similar to what the Earles provided, with much less unsprung weight. And as if that wasn't enough, when they introduced the K1200 models, they came with yet another fork design, the "Duolever", that doesn't have telescoping fork legs at all.

Oh, if I may ask, what is the difference between the R60/2 and R60US?



Click on:

http://bmwdean.com/slash2.htm

1966 R60/2 , or R50/2 is more in the value of your plot

.....or roll back the clock 5 or so years.

Bruce

Amazing replies, guys. Clearly I came to the right place here! All this information is priceless, and it should all prove to be useful for the details.

Thank you so much once again, may you all be blessed with great bikes

I'm developing a script for a student project, and in the story the main character owns a vintage BMW (inherited from his grandfather). In the plot, he had to sell his bike in order to settle a debt.

What I need your help with is:

He is a "poor" guy, so to speak, so the bike is maintained mostly out of his love for it (i.e perhaps he couldn't replace missing parts with original, expensive parts; but it is clean, working well, etc.). I'm not familiar with how much maintaining such a bike would cost, but I'm sure that you would. The question is, knowing his monetary limitation for maintenance, which bike model would be appropriate for him to have, if (for plot reasons) the bike finally end up being sold for about $5000?

The initial script called for a 1966 BMW R69S but a quick search online revealed that this model are far more pricey.

I thank you all in advance.