Forum bmwbike.com

The purists amoung you will inevitably cringe or roll your eyes at this question...

What are the exhaust options for a 1960 R60/2. I have been a classic bike fan for some time and love the sound of a classic thumping away on a great peice of backroad.

While the R60/2 is a beautiful classic bike I can't help but lust after a little more Italian twin bark to replace its current measured german precision and quite achiever note.

What are my options to open up the note somewhat? Are megaphone type exhausts a viable option or am I heading for top end meltdown.

Would appreciate your thoughts...

The stock chrome steel mufflers are the quietest.

Stainless steel mufflers from EPCO or Overlander (with Overlander internals) are louder.

The straight Swirin-type mufflers are louder still. Swirin has not been in business for many years, but I think a similar type of muffler is still sold by JC Whitney.

The Hoske megaphone mufflers are the loudest of all. They have removable baffles but I don't know how that sounds.

It may help the engine to use the next richer jet with the lower restriction stainless and Swirin-type mufflers. If using the Hoske muffler, I think it is advisable to experiment with much richer jetting, and I have heard of top-end problems from such low restriction. Duane Ausherman, a dealer from the old era, has said that racing mufflers invariably caused top-end problems on his customers' /2 bikes.

I used EPCO stainless mufflers on my R69US for two years, and they had a pleasant bark that was OK until I added an Avonaire fairing. Then the mufflers were too loud.

If you use a muffler louder than a stainless EPCO or Overlander, I think you may be tired of the noise soon.

I fitted a set of Mark Huggett's Hoske lookalike mufflers-great sound, but have the occasional flat spot on acceleration so will have to give the carb jetting some serious thought-especially as my bike is a hybrid-R69S basically but with R69 5 ring pistons of 7.5-1 c/r. I still am of the oipinion that fitting a system without the crossover pipe might give a bit more of a classic sound to a standard set of the BMW mufflers.