When I bought this bike it came with it's original front end, which although was cutting edge in 1977 when the bike was built (actually I do not know when it was built or when and where it made it's debut), is now looking very dated. The top photo shows the original set-up which I have been told came from a Kawasaki KH model from 76/77 but all the bikes of that time had the disc on the left hand side of the bike, so it appears the fork legs were fitted the other way round, so that the brake is now on the right and the caliper behind the fork leg. The cast 19 inch tubed, 7 spoke wheel was very heavy and fitted with a standard drilled stainless disc, the caliper being a single-acting single piston item. There was no form of fork brace which was normally built into the heavy chrome standard mudguards of the time.The brake hose was still the original rubber/rigid brake pipe and as the legs had been reversed the brake pipe takes a strange routing which appeared unsupported.
The second photo shows the front end when work rebuilding the bike started; the wheel is leaning on the wall behind the front forks.
The bottom photo shows the current front end. The forks are still the originals, stripped and cleaned with new seals and the lengths of old steel pipe used to increase the spring stiffness, replaced with aluminium spacers. The wheel is now a cast 18 inch tubeless three spoke item from a 2008 Honda 125, sporting a single fully floating disc from a Kawasaki 1200 which bolted straight on. The caliper is a Nissin four piston double-acting unit from a Triumph Speed Triple, with a one piece stainless brake hose, it only needed the aluminium bracket and spacers to make it fit. A fork brace was made and fitted, picking up on the original mudguard mounting points, all the fasteners are stainless and even an aluminium spindle nut has been made to save weight!
Attachments
Original front end Front end.jpg (21.7 KiB) Viewed 26166 times
Front end dismantled 2009_0927sept200920003.JPG (1.23 MiB) Viewed 26166 times
Current front end IMG_4046.JPG (2.41 MiB) Viewed 26166 times