Fashion Victim warning

[TonyH]

OK, firstly i admit i only want to do this because i think it looks better and realise that there will be people out there that think its a silly idea. But here goes anyway.

I have a 350 with a single front disc (can you guess the question yet?) and i want to swap round the forks so that the caliper is behind the stanction on the right hand side (when sat on bike). What i can't work out is can i simply swap them over leaving the speedo drive on the right or do i have to muck around with new spacer. Any one do this successfully??

Thanks, Tony

[George 350]

If you want to have the disc on the right, you will need to either get a 500 or late 350 speedo drive housing, or machine off the outer flange to clear the disc/bolts. If you just want the caliper behind the fork leg and don't mind the disc being on the left, than an alternative is to use sport/later 350 forks which had mounts for another caliper and simply reverse the forks and install the spindle from the other side.
Did this to my Sport before upgrading to a 320mm disc and better caliper.
George.
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[stuart]

I purchased one of the 500 speedo drive covers from NLM for £5 secondhand, which does exactly what you want.

[TonyH]

Ah that all looks very simple, think i best give NLM a ring. thank you both for your help. Tony

[pistonslap]

George, your 320mm conversion sounds interesting. What disc and caliper did you use and was it fairly straightforward? - Presumably a different (or modified) fork leg was required. I really want to improve breaking and really don't want to go down the twin disc route

[George 350]

My brake upgrade was done by purchasing a caliper and disc from a Kawasaki ZX-10 from a breakers. I then made a hub-disc carrier from HE30 aluminium billet, (not quite so easy unless you work in/have good access to machine tools) and used replacement disc "bobbins" to fix disc to hub. I reversed the forks (having a Sport it had 2 sets of caliper mounts) and the top caliper bolt lined up perfectly, while the lower mount needed a link about 40mm long. The original Grimeca master cylinder works perfectly. I did this in 1996 and haven't regretted it at all.

The most expensive bit would be getting the hub made up, but the cost of this could be reduced considerably if you made the disc hub from an old steel disc, while another option would be to use the complete front fork/disc/wheel assembly from an early Aprilia RS/Cagiva Mito or from an Italian built Honda NSR125.
George.

[pistonslap]

Thanks George, Thats great that you can still use the original fork legs. I did actually make a replacement disc from scratch some years ago so I have a alloy hub (presumably the offset for the ZX10 caliper is different however). I did chicken out when it came to floating bobbins and just bolted it together. I still have a lathe so making another hub wouldn't be a problem. I'm sure you have a huge improvement on the breaking even with the original Grimeca master cylinder? I do also like the idea of the whole front end from the Mito etc. as you would also get the benefit of higher tech forks. (by the way I presume this is George Lane I'm talking to?
Guy

[George 350]

No, George Farenden.