Starting the wheel swap

[great white]

You will be happy, very happy with that 170 back tire. The 17" size will open up a whole catalog of tire selections that are now open to you.

I noticed it looks like you have a lot of weight on your back rim for tire balancing. I seems like a lot to me.
Unlike the old bias ply tires, these new modern radial tires are almost perfectly balanced from the factory so I suspect your inbalance comes from the rim itself and/or cush hub.
Thought about having it spin balanced?

Those are the weights that came on the wheel. I just havent stripped them off yet. No idea if it's balanced or not, but the tire is junk anyways (nail hole, cracked sidewalls, etc) so it will be replaced and the whole thing re-balanced.

[great white]

So from what I've read about the FZR to FJ wheel swap, material has to be removed from the wheel itself.  How did you accomplish that?  You have a lathe with over 9" from headstock to bedway?  This is a swap I'd like to accomplish this off season but it's tough finding a machinist to perform the work.

Joe

Correct. The hub section of the wheel itself is wider than the FJ wheel, so it needs to be cut down. My lathe is a 10x42 (5" swing) so I couldn't get the wheel on it.

What I did was lay the wheel on my surface plate and use scribes off the surface plate to scribe lines on the "vanes" in the drive section. Once I had all the lines scribed, I used a grinder with a flap wheel to remove the bulk of the material and then hand filed the last fee thou to the scribe lines.

I wouod have prefered to use a lathe to do the work, but this also acheves acceptable results. Luckily, it's cast aluminum which works easily with hand files and sanding.

The sprocket carrier was done on the lathe, which is where the critical dimensions for hub alignment are modified.

[Old Rider]

Very interesting post i like reading about your work .You are a lucky man having a lathe machine i wish i had one myself (Then i think i could have bored the cylindersleeves that i had to send  away  for boring)  i have been working on a lathemacine many years ago. Is there any benefit using a FZR wheel instead of a gsxr wheel? and isent the gsxr wheel swap easier?

[Urban_Legend]

The Suzuki wheel swap would have been a piece of cake for you. If you have all the bits (wheel, sprocket carrier spacers and caliper hanger) then you could have machined up two new spacers and welded a lug on the bottom of the swing arm for the brake torque arm to bolt too. Then it's all done.

Mark.

[great white]

Very interesting post i like reading about your work .You are a lucky man having a lathe machine i wish i had one myself (Then i think i could have bored the cylindersleeves that i had to send  away  for boring)  i have been working on a lathemacine many years ago. Is there any benefit using a FZR wheel instead of a gsxr wheel? and isent the gsxr wheel swap easier?

My lathe is nothing special, just an old mid 50's Atlas TH42 that I restored mechanically and made a few functional upgrades to (variable speed DC motor, cross slide, etc). The thing that makes it as capable as it is is the amount of tooling and accessories I have collected for it over the years. Iirc, I paid a G for the lathe and have at least that much (or more) into the tooling.

Fzr wheels are an exact match (style wise) to the FJ wheels. The GSXR wheels are very close in appearance to the FJ wheels, so much so that most probably wouldn't see any difference without getting right up on them to look. If you did front and rear 'zuki wheels, I doubt anyone would notice anything who wasn't an FJ nut or happened to notice "suzuki" cast on the rim spokes.

But I'm a "stickler" for details, so it was the FZR wheels or nothing for me.

[great white]

I think I'll call that done:



Can't image getting the chain alignment getting much better than that!

Chain running dead center on the sprockets.

That s with th cush drive installed, but still needing the sprocket carrier bearing to wheel bearing spacer. Thats easy peasy; just stick a ball of clay in there, compress, measure and cut one down to fit.

Oh yeah, I'll also have to reinstall the sprocket mounting studs. I removed them for the machining work.

[Millietant]

I know this is a really stupid question....but......are you sure the sprocket nuts won't catch on the swing arm ? The sprocket looks awfully close to the arm - it appears quite a bit closer than mine does (might just be an optical illusion) and mine only just clear the arm.

[Tuned forks]

Dean, which wheel/swingarm combo are you using?

Joe

[great white]

I know this is a really stupid question....but......are you sure the sprocket nuts won't catch on the swing arm ? The sprocket looks awfully close to the arm - it appears quite a bit closer than mine does (might just be an optical illusion) and mine only just clear the arm.

Yup, they clear just fine. Haven't measured, but I'd eyeball it at about 4-5mm clearance. I cit it with the studs in the carrier and then removed the studs to center the chain on the sprocket.

[great white]

Dean, which wheel/swingarm combo are you using?

Joe

Looks like the FJ swingarm from what I can see in that pic...

[great white]

"Unicorn" anyone?





Will be starting the front wheel swap shortly. Obviously, lots of cosmetic work to do as well. I'll start with just stripping the red paint off and the start fitting it.

[Millietant]

Dean, which wheel/swingarm combo are you using?

Joe

Looks like the FJ swingarm from what I can see in that pic...

Joe/Great White - it's a YZF 600 R Thundercat wheel with all ancillaries (Cush/carrier/disc/caliper mount arm, spacers etc) in a standard 3CV swinging arm and spindle.

Like G-W I wanted the wheel/brake set-up to look totally Yamaha factory original and I reckon I've achieved that, in spades.

The other benefit of using the Thundercat wheel is that other than taking 8mm off the caliper arm and a bit of machining the on the spacer/sprocket side, there was no other "mechanical/machining" work needed (other than turning the sprocket around so that the shoulder is on the inside and getting a 1"" longer brake hose).

I reckon this swap is by far the easiest, keeps everything looking the most original and keeps the standard torque arm etc. People say the GSXR is the easiest, but with relocating the caliper etc and remounting the torque arm, I reckon there's a lot more work involved in the GSXR swap - and it doesn't keep any "Yamaha" originality.

(Sorry it's a bit mucky now, I've done about 2.5k miles since the conversion was sompleted)

[Pat Conlon]

Yes, the YZF600 was my first wheel swap. Jon Cain, the pioneer of the swap, helped with the machine work on the cush drive, spacer and caliper arm. It's only a 5" wide rim but perfect for the 170 back tire.
Here's more info: http://www.fjowners.com/index.php?topic=2511.0

Now.....Back to Great White's project!

[great white]

Undoing the decades of "sin" by previous owners:



Luckily, there appears to be very few blemishes on the rims under the multiple layers of paint. So far, everything I've found will buff out.

I gotta say: I know my FJ rims came painted silver/gray, but I'm digging the bare cast center and polished rim lip look...

[great white]

After first application of stripper:



Yessir, that's going to clean up nicely!