Thursday, January 30, 2014

XL500 front wheel shenanigans

Those who have a long memory will remember this front wheel I created for my DR400 vintage supermoto build. Its a CB175 hub, custom spokes (136mm long) and a rear aluminium rim from a late 70s YZ250 which is 17 x 2.75. Pros - a large range of tyres will fit, axle is the same size, fits snuggly between the fork legs, can use a cable speedo ex Honda CB (23 inch front wheel speedo very hard to find for stock front wheel).Cons - finding a way to secure the brake stay to the fork leg. More pros than cons, so thats good! With the speedo, an original 2.75 x 18 front tyre is very close in diameter to a 110/80 x 17 tyre, about 10mm in diameter taller so the speedo will be accurate.

Of course there is an option 2....The other 16x3 wheel fitted with a front tyre (brand new). I got a CB750 triple clamp from 66 motorcycles to see if it would space the fork legs further apart in order to fit in a wider front tyre. This clamp is 20mm wider, but the wheel still needs to go to the brake side by around 5mm amd I'm not sure where that is going to come from! There will be a little bit of custom fab work to fix the brake plate to the forks and how to mount the brake cable!

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