Forum bmwbike.com

Would any body know the fork oil weight? and amount of oil in each leg? for my 1968 R60US, can only find information on the /2 and is no help as the US has telescopic forks.
thanks

I have an R69US. I use BMW 7.5W Fork Oil. The complete capacity of each fork is 280 cc, but 15 cc is trapped in the threaded alloy cup at the bottom. If you are rebuilding the fork, or if you drain the fork by unscrewing the cup to clean out sediment, use 280 cc. If you drain the fork by unscrewing the drain screw, use 265 cc.

When refilling, it is better to underfill than to overfill. Underfilling merely makes the action a little softer, but overfilling can make the action quite hard.

You can intentionally soften the action of the fork a little by only using 250 cc of oil, or soften it alot by using 5W fork oil. I slightly underfill my forks with 7.5W oil. If you are a large person, or carry a passenger, I think that 5W oil might allow the forks to bottom out on hard bumps.

BMW originally installed a 3/4 inch steel spacer on top of the springs for preloading the springs. After about a year, a Bulletin was issued saying the fork had better action if the spacer was removed. I found the spacers had been removed from my forks.

The old springs and the lack of preload spacers, combined with my 210 lbs and the weight of an Avonaire fairing, made the front end of the bike too low and soft, and the springs were compressing too much. So I installed new heavy duty /5 springs, together with a set of used preload spacers.