Been thinking- fork swap

[BrentMartell]

That is what I would try as well. The aluminum rolled with a top and bottom edge or tabs bent over to hold it in place would be nice. I am going to be pulling my bike apart tonight to work on measurements etc. It is time.

Rode the GG this weekend and back to back to a suzuki 250 2 stroke with showa's. My worked over zokes handled the tight and gnarly extremely well, rocks disappear, but the higher speed hack and g's tweak this bike to the point I have to roll of the throttle and go to cruise pace. The showa's were nervous and a little hard in the slow and but took the fast stuff well. I am looking forward to this experiment. The showa's are really close to what I want and I think with base shim mods, and a little tweak to mid valve stack they will be spot on.

[Zhack]

Brent,

I was suprised to hear you found the 47mm Showa's LOOSE in the triple clamps after looking over the diameter data posted towards the start of this thread. I got out my digital caliper and indeed measured the Zokes at 54.79mm at the top clamp and the Showa's at 53.46. Do you think 1.3mm is too much discrepancy for the clamps to "suck up"?

I guess a roll of 0.6mm thick sheet metal (aluminum?) is the ticket. This should actually be pretty easy.

I read and reread through all your previous posts. Having seen the forks in your hands now, can you summarize the steps you will have to take to make this work with the GasGas front wheel? I'm gonna take the easy road and use an entire Honda front end so I won't have the compatibilty of bearings/axle/brake issue you will have to face.

[BrentMartell]

Yeah me too. Irritated actually. I thought it would fine but I tighted the bolts all the way and the top of the showa is loose. It will have to be shimmed for sure.

There are two thoughts about this entire project:

Complete front end
Mixed.

The mixed was to see if we could do it, CHEAPER. Not necessarily easier. Also, which front end is better to mate to gasgas, KX, Honda, Suzuki? We have a Honda and a suzuki in the line up now to test from. I choose the honda because we had it first. My buddy jus picked up a trick RM 250 2006. Really nice bike, low time, clean.

[BrentMartell]

Just had a thought: wondering if the trail/rake or whatever is going to be OK. Need to compare the zoke and showa axle positions. Talked to my bud and we are going to have look at this as well. LOL, more learning.

[Zhack]

I'm eager to see what you learn about the GG in Honda T-clamps angle as I have a spare set of Honda T-Clamps available. That could be really slick too but will depend on availability of compatible bearings etc. Maybe a custom stem could also be turned by a machinist.....

[GMP]

Keep in mind the GG clamp offset of 22mm is one reason the bike steers so well. Just tossing on a Honda front end with an unknown offset may have undesirable results. Measure the fork foot offset as well. Cheap and/or easy is seldom best.

[BrentMartell]

Update: buddy took the clamps to the machinist. All is set. He is boring the clamp to Honda clamp dimensions and then building a compression sleeve for the top clamp. Perfect. At rest the gg clamp only needed to be bored .25mm each side or .5 overall. I know it is weird but that is what he mic'd it at. I will not argue this guy, amazing facility and knowledge.

The Honda axle placement is roughly 3mm closer to the fork than the gg. I guess a less steep t clamp offset would be required to keep all the same. I think I will try it and see what happens.

[GMP]

Thats 3mm axel center to fork tube center?

[Zhack]

GMP...Good point about steering offset. Stock Honda clamps are 24mm. GG is 22. I have a set of RG3 clamps for the CRF that are a custom 22mm offset.

So....Now I'm thinking about using the RG3 clamps with the 37mm Honda Showa's. That would mean all i need is a steering stem with the correct diameters (to press fit to the RG3 bottom clamp and match the ID of the GG steering stem bearings) and the right length to match the GG steering head. Does that sound correct?

On the other side, I would need a steering stem to match the GG clamps and Honda steering bearing diameters and steering tube length....

So....in an ideal world, IF the portion of both stems that press into the triple clamps were IDENTICAL in diameter, I could just swap steering stems.

In the likely scenario that they are not, could I just turn down the bigger one to press into the smaller and space the smaller to fit the bigger bored lower clamp?

If the GG stem is smaller in diameter than the bore of the lower RG3 clamp, I'm not opposed to permanently altering the lower RG3.....Could I permanently occlude the lower bore (Weld in a plug?) and have it rebored smaller?

This is a lot of speculation. Brent, do you have any data on steering stem press fit diameters into lower triple clamp or is it easily accessible/measurable to you? I assume you have both bikes apart at this time....

I'd appreciate any thoughts/info/ideas/suggestions you guys have on this.

Steering stem swap/custom manufacture seems way more sano than rigging clamps to fit wrong sized forks.....

Thanks for listening

[Zhack]

Phoned All Balls to discuss a lame@$$ swingarm bearing issue and guess what popped up when I searched for their phone number and LOOK WHAT I FOUND...

http://www.allballsracing.com/index.php/forkconvertion

Holy $h!t!!!!!!

Plug and Play Fork Swap. All perms and combs of front end swap bearings. I simply click and order bearings to swap entire triple clamp, steering stem, fork, brake, hub, axle, wheel assemblies between my two bikes. UNBELIEVABLE!

Not too good to be true. Had a lengthy discussion with Paul at AllBallsRacing. They have done the work of cataloging, inventorying and selling bearings for this exact purpose....and have all makes and models of GasGas in their database.

This is a NO BRAINER!

WOOHOO!