My vintage supermoto

[Christo]

Last night I fitted the 16x3 inch rear wheel and 17x2.15 rim to DR front hub as pictured. The rim needs to move to the left by 10mm to sit in the middle of the swingarm. To achieve this I am going to machine about 10mm off the face of the cush drive and redrill to suit DR sprocket.

[Christo]

Mocked up what is going to be the final front wheel and fitted it to the bike.

[Christo]

Picked up this front wheel today after work. I bought it for the hub and brake assembly as it is a 160mm diameter drum to exactly match my rim and is also a twin-leading shoe type which offers superior stopping power to the single leading shoe. Its got a 15mm axle rather than a 12mm so its also a little bit more durable too. So I will have to modify the forks to accept the larger axle and brake stay bracket. This particular wheel is from a Honda CB175 road bike of early 70s vintage. Also need to source a brake cable as well.

[Christo]

KZ650 16x3 rim mounted to KX USD forks. I have bought another such wheel off e-bay to mount to the back as originally planned. Aluminium rims painted, hot-rod style. This is the result. Tyre options are 130 or 150 wide rear and 110 or 120 wide front in Bridgestone BT45s. Black rims look pretty 'tough', really monochromatic.

[Christo]

Using AutoCAD I designed and drew up this torque arm bracket to connect the brake shoe backing plate assembly to the lower part of the left-hand fork leg. The red lines on the image show where it will go. The blue line shows the path of the brake cable. The cable mount will be coincident with the outer mounting point.




Then I quickly modelled ths brake bracket up in AutoCad 3d. Upper two holes mount to the lower fork leg, lower hole is where the brake cable goes through and the hole for mounting to the brake plate is hidden behind. Have used photoshop to emboss 'crispy one' on the only custom part so far. Part will be painted to match cylinder and the rear shock springs.

[Oppet]

Nice to see somebody is slower building than me 

[Christo]

Hooray! Its been a while coming, but my retro front end is nearly ready to fit to the bike. Had a tyre fitted to the wheel this morning, a Metzeler Lasertec 110/80-16 which is the widest I can get between the fork legs. Also picked up a front brake cable from a Suzuki RM250Z (1982 vintage motocrosser) and it is long enough! Result! All thats left to do now is fine tune the wheel spacers and make a fitting to fit the lower end of the brake cable to the actuator. Am very happy with the result!

[Christo]

Bolted my USD front end onto the DR400 Supermoto tonight. Fits really well, the triple clamp bolt is the right length, all the steering stops work and the forks do not hit the tank! Am planning to push the forks up so they protrude out of the top of the triple clamp as the USD forks are 100mm longer. The 21 inch front tyre is 710mm in diameter, where as the 16 inch front tyre is 604mm in diameter, so there is 50mm already, so I just need to push the forks up by around another 50mm to get back to standard geometry.

[Christo]

Got a new tyre fitted to the rear wheel on Saturday and bolted it up, just need to fine tune the wheel spacers and wait for the sprocket to arrive. Got rid of the tailight bracket etc and seat and am now thinking I really need a really low profile cafe style seat! Also wired on the front mudguard to see what kind of bracket I need to make and bolted on the bars. Starting to really look like a bike that will go somewhere some day.

[Christo]

At last I have a fully functioning front end - old school 180mm drum brake on my XL500S