Friday, November 30, 2012

BMW front forks

I've done a lot with the front forks of my BMW, stiffer springs, more preload, thicker oil, shortened original springs...
I pretty much had a good setup for a while, eccept for the occasional tankslapper at slow speeds.
Back in the day, they sold tubular fork braces, that I thought would make a great period specific addition to my bike, so I bought one off ebay, mounted it to my bike and as the weather was sort off nice, I had a testride.


I wasn't at the end of the street yet, or I had the worst tankslapper yet...
I had hoped this would be pretty much the answer to all problems, but it turned out to open up a whole new can of worms.
What to do now?
Another period upgrade for the front forks were alloy top yokes that clamp the forklegs instead of the original bolted connection. I've seen them on ebay, and they are not cheap. But what I've seen before, was that some people make their own by using a bottom yoke as a top, and as we had some bottom yokes laying around, I started adapting one.


In the picture you can see what will be the underside of the top yoke, I machined it down so my clip-ons could remain as high as possible for comfortable road use.
I also machined the center hole to fit the stemnut.
and then mounted it, as it was still sort of nice weather, I had a testride.
Yess, this made a dramatic inprovement in handling, not perfect yet, but were atleast getting close again. Now that the forks are much stiffer, I might just need thinner oil again.


Now I just need to finish the yoke, some more material needs to be machined off to be able to tighten the stemnut, I'm just not sure yet what to do.
Leave it as is, showing the raw casting with the numbers and logo, or machine the whole top flat and polish it to get one flat shiny surface....what do you think?

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Tank Coating

My dad has been working on one of his Beemers, that will need its tank coated...this got me thinking about an old SS50zk1 tank I had laying around.
When coated it would be usable again, if something could be done about the mangled filler opening.
And so this project began:




the original opening has been cut out and replaced with an original Honda flip-up cap that was cut out of a CB-motorcycle gas tank.
I never really liked the looks of an SS50z tank, but this really makes it a lot better.
I might even use this tank for my race project, otherwise it will be a spare, or for sale.