Fitting newer Jap sportbike parts to a 70 Bonny

[RDog]

Hello I'm new here. First post. Has anyone out there had any experience with creating a cafe racer style Triumph using parts (front-end, wheels, and brakes) from a newer jap sportbike? I have these parts from a 99 Ninja 500R and would nix the hard-tail direction I had planned for my 70 Bonneville if I could do a cafe with the modern stuff. Any opinions are welcomed. Thanks.

Rob

[Dynamite67trump]

well, I don't know a hell of a lot about how it all works, but I've seen quite a bit of that sort of stuff in The Horse magazine. it's pretty much a 1%er chopper mag, but it's got some cool articles, and alot of stuff that is just jimmyed together. I know I've seen some trumps with some jap wheels and some other strange stuff put together. A Website to check would be hackasaw.com ... he's a chopper guy, but he does alot of that stuff, british low budget thrown together stuff.. and 90% of the time.. it comes out pretty damn good

Drinkin' TNT, Smokin Dynamite

[caferacer6]

I have a 1967 Triumph with a 1974 KAW. H1 front end. It was easy to install all I had to do was make some spacers for the KAW. bearings to fit the Triumph frame.You can see a photo of that bike at caferace.com
It's a1967 TR6R.

[Bret]

Rob,
We had the Jap parts on a Triumph topic come up on the board a few months ago. But since you were not here then, let me give you and anyone that may have missed it the low down.
Be careful! When fitting a component in an otherwise good working order to a British bike, said component will soon only work marginal at best and may actually fail completely. Overnight, for no known reason, all of your bike's brake fluid will become a new stain on the garage floor. As near as I can tell it's a donor organ rejection issue with no known cure. Left undetected, you could die when the brake lever hits the bar and you hit something else. You have been warned.
Bret @ Glass from the Past

[Chikor]

really....because i got an '85 ninja that i want to take the fork for a triumph for a cafe job.....ya know i have seen some jap to brit jobs done and thay looked real clean....

"Ride Fast and Take Chances"

[aaron]

I have mounted many different types of front ends to different motorcycles. I've never really worked with modern stuff. I usually stay with in the period. Although mounting the forks should be of the same science. I believe the Ninja 500R has a similar triple clamp stem, so any machinist could make the difference up to. If you can't get anyone to do it or have problems doing it yourself, I know you can send it to Hutchinson Cycle in Wakefield, MA and Hutch or myself will do it.

Also my welcomed options are a set late model forks from a disc model Triumph, or maybe a nice set of Ceriani forks with a big fat drum on them.

Aaron - Bid fat drum lover

[joe c]

aaron, do i have to produce photographs of your lathe handiwork for all here to see??? keep aaron away from anything you want turned on your front end. the free parts he gave me drove me nearly insane trying to figure out what was wrong with them and how. (did he really conveniently forget to tell me he did some turning on it to fit it to a b50?? did he really mean to make it into an egg shape??) i just dont know. as far as retro fitting front ends, there really shouldnt be anything you cant do with a grinder, a tig welder, a hydrolic press, and a lathe. just kiding. you can grind the stem weld off of the bottom if its welded. have it pressed out at a machine shop, have a new one that fits correctly pressed in, then have it welded. or you may need to have the old one pressed out, turned, then pressed in and welded back. its all very easy to do if you have the right tools. if not a machinist will charge you not much to do it. the length of the stem is important as is finding the correct bearing. the bearing is the tough one for that retro fit. i think chances are you'll have to have the stem turned at the bearing surfaces to get the bearing i.d. to work with the bearing o.d. that is, getting the jap metric stem size to work with the english whatever size on the outside. should all be pretty easy enough for a decent machinist though. there are pics of a cool looking bsa modern project on the w650link i posted here a few days back. there was also a guy at the track who ive seen at larz anderson with a very cool t120 motor in a hawk frame. aaron probably knows who im talking about. good luck

jc

[aaron]

The work that you ended up up with was actually good, it was just for the wrong bike. I guess I should start labeling projects I never finish. If you had a BSA, that would have worked just fine.

Aaron
Also my connection is finally back up.

[joe c]

excuses, excuses. so youre telling me you meant to turn that thing that way??? why? it changes the offset and the top clamps wouldnt have been able to clamp up properly because of the mis-alignment. then you put an aluminum spacer on it. ive never seen a triumph tree with anything like that. (youve seen more than me)i think if you started to label things you didnt finish, youd spend more time labeling than doing anything else! i know you were just trying to get me killed. thats your real goal. thank god i figured it out!

did i give you that thing?? i dont even know where it is or what i did with it. it was a keeper though. it might be in my drawer of things i can figure out. mystery cb350 cams and petcocks and things of the like.

(mean enough for you?)

jc

[aaron]

It worked great on a BSA Lightning. It also took out the long British rake and made the same geometry as a Honda 550four. It did bolt up and also gave my BSA a disc front end, but then as time went on I became more of a purist and decided to put the drum back on. I have the stem in case I need to do the same again. My percentage of completed projects to none completed projects is still pretty good considering how many bikes I've built in the last decade. How many frames did you say you designed last year and how many of them did you actually race?

Aaron
You are mean and I will have 3 different bikes this year on the track and 2 others for 2004. Meanie.