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This 1975 R60/6 was bought in 1976 for $1,750 with low miles and a small dent in the tank, from someone who had gone into the service. When equipped with a Vetter Windjammer fairing and Craven Golden Arrow panniers, the bike made a very comfortable tourer. The only drawback was pinging in hot weather under load. I removed the cylinders and installed thick metal gaskets under them to lower the compression ratio, in an effort to stop the pinging, but all it did was reduce the power. While I had the cylinders off, I painted them black, which I had always thought was a proper color for cylinders, as well as function for dissipating heat. My R69US had cast iron cylinders which had enamel paint, but I thought enamel might not adhere to the aluminum cylinders of the R60/6. I found a thin black coating, almost like a penetrating stain, made for the purpose. I applied it with Q-tips and it gave the cylinders a thin black matte finish.
A few years after getting the bike, I had just ridden across Covered Bridge's bumpy wooden deck when I smelled electrical smoke. A quick stop showed tendrils of smoke arising from the headlight shell which housed all the wiring connections. The bike made it home, but the the headlight shell contained a mass of burned, fused wires. I determined that there was an extra hot wire in the fairing's harness, with a bare end. I had not used the wire, nor had I realized that it was hot and needed taping, so it lay in the fairing for years until the bumpy bridge caused it to touch something that was grounded. I was able to repair the wiring without replacing the harness, using proper colored new wiring, solder and shrink tubing.
Fifteen years after I sold this bike, a bare R60/6 appeared at a club meeting with a tank that looked like the one I had repaired and repainted. The unique black cylinders were positive identification that it was my old bike. This was a good trouble-free bike, but the pinging and a lack of power exacerbated by the base gaskets made carrying a passenger less pleasant than it might have been.