ciaociao

yay!
ok, so here are the pictures of my sealed bearing conversion for the front wheel all ready to go. i thought i got some photos of the bearing cups and knocking them out, and making the spacer for between the sealed bearings, but i can’t find them.. lame. oh well, if enough people want to see it, i’ll find another wheel to convert and make a walk through for it.
here are pics of it ready to go on the bike!


you can see the spacer in the last pic, showing the bearing inside the brake hub. it’s just a piece of chromoly tubing cut just long enough to support the lateral load of being bolted into the fork. if you do this conversion, make sure you use good steel tubing of a high grade, cut the ends SQUARE, and make sure they only touch the inner race of the bearing.

i’ve also started on the new swing arms for the front fork. originally i was going to make a bracket that bolted to the axle to hold my shock dampeners, but then i realized i needed to mill out the axle slots to fit the larger axle that goes along with the sealed bearing conversion, and that there is no good way to build those brackets to begin with, so i decided custom swing arms were the way to go.

first, i took a block of aluminum billet and cut out two chunks large enough to whittle down to size.

once i had those, i had to take them to the mill and mill them down to the proper width. then i started to shape the inside bottom corner of the arms so that they could pivot in the fork like the originals.


corners shaped, it was time to mill the hole for the bolt that they will pivot on. i made them the same diameter as the holes in the original arms so that i could use the bushings and spacer from them.

the bushings press in nice and tight, and everything fits the fork.
next is to drill the hole for the axle (it will be in the same place as the original, just larger for the bigger axle) and to mill in the slots for the dampeners. once i have that done, i can figure out where i want to drill the holes for the bottom of the dampener and mill off excess aluminum from the arms to reduce weight.
then it’s just a matter of building the upper brackets and picking up some pins to hook everything together! i’m hoping for three different shock mounts at the bottom, maybe two up top. or, to keep it simple, i might just go with one up top and two down below. that would give me a “hard” and “soft” setting.
if i were real fancy, i could do the math, figure out the angles and everything, and know exactly how stiff the front end will be in each mode. but i’m not fancy, i’m just going to wing it. if it’s too stiff, i’ll pick up some 60lb dampeners from the same people i got the 80lb ones from and try again.

so yeah, that’s where i stand. i still don’t know for sure which carb i’m going to use (i have three to choose from), and don’t have the electronic system all ready to go.. and rally time is like a month away! jeez.