My 17" FZR rear wheel mod.

[1tinindian]

Ok, I got the collar out of the wheel bearing, (tapped it out with a socket).

I plan on using the one that came out of the FZR wheel, as the measurements seem to match the specs for the FJ parts.

[Firehawk068]

FZR, and FJ use the same collar spacer, so machine that one 

[1tinindian]

I know it's been a long time in getting this completed, and not being sure of what I needed to do, I put it off last winter, but once riding season started, I hated the thought of having the bike down for any length of time.
Now that the rallys are done for the summer and the weather has turn chilly once again, it was the perfect time to get this thing finished up.

I had the cush drive hub and spacer machined, but still had issues with the final fit, so I continued to remove metal, a little at a time, until I got the spacers to fit correctly from one side of the swing arm to the other side.

Once I got the wheel fit within the swing arm, I installed my custom brake arm, Galfer rear rotor, and made shorter dog bones.
Yes Pat, I did a little polishing while I was in there, too.

The stock dog bones measure 125mm, center to center on the holes.
By dropping the 17" wheel (180/55 tire) onto a 1/2 board, the new, shorter dogbones needed to be 115mm, center to center.

I rode the bike before and after installing the shorter bones, and I must say, the shorter ones do add to the whole 17" rear swap
I can see where you guys at the rally were making it look so easy in taking the curves, as I now realize my stock setup was at its limits (or maybe it was just me ).

Anyway, here are the pictures up to this point that should put a finish on this mod, for me.

Leon




Distance of the ground with the stock dog bones.

Distance after shorter dog bones installed.





Looks like I need to mod the side stand now!
Thanks for all the help from everyone that has helped me through this swap, I appreciate it!

Leon    

[craigo]

Wow Leon,

That came out beautiful.  Love the exhaust all nice and golden as well as that brake rotor.  And the shine is blinding.    Were you able to just modify the stock brake arm or was it built from scratch?  Regardless, it came out very nice.

What would you take for a set of those dog bones.  I have no facilities to make a set here. 

Good on ya,

CraigO

[FJmonkey]

What material did you make your dog bones from? I hope you stayed away from mild steel (HR, HRPO) or 304 SST. Soft as warm crap. They will work for a while but will stretch till they fail. CRS (1018) should be OK as long as you protect them from corrosion. At my work we have been dong R&D with a material called Domex. Crap that stuff is strong. HRPO and 304 SST has a tensile strength near 30ksi, Domex is 100ksi (amazing what alloying steel with Titanium will do). If we start using it I will try to offer dog bone sets for cost to club members. Maybe I should sell them to Randy and work out a wholesale deal with other parts of his I might want (Emulators...), I love my fork brace.

[1tinindian]

What material did you make your dog bones from? I hope you stayed away from mild steel (HR, HRPO) or 304 SST. Soft as warm crap. They will work for a while but will stretch till they fail. CRS (1018) should be OK as long as you protect them from corrosion. At my work we have been dong R&D with a material called Domex. Crap that stuff is strong. HRPO and 304 SST has a tensile strength near 30ksi, Domex is 100ksi (amazing what alloying steel with Titanium will do). If we start using it I will try to offer dog bone sets for cost to club members. Maybe I should sell them to Randy and work out a wholesale deal with other parts of his I might want (Emulators...), I love my fork brace.

1/4" x 1" steel from Menards.
As far as the technical description goes... I have no idea.

Leon

[craigo]

What material did you make your dog bones from? I hope you stayed away from mild steel (HR, HRPO) or 304 SST. Soft as warm crap. They will work for a while but will stretch till they fail. CRS (1018) should be OK as long as you protect them from corrosion. At my work we have been dong R&D with a material called Domex. Crap that stuff is strong. HRPO and 304 SST has a tensile strength near 30ksi, Domex is 100ksi (amazing what alloying steel with Titanium will do). If we start using it I will try to offer dog bone sets for cost to club members. Maybe I should sell them to Randy and work out a wholesale deal with other parts of his I might want (Emulators...), I love my fork brace.

This is why I don't want to mess around making my own dogbones.  I have no idea what is proper material nor do I have access to a drill press. 

Oh, and I meant to ask, but never got around to it, how does everyone love their new fork braces?  A lot more stable around the corners, eh???

CraigO

[1tinindian]

Wow Leon,

That came out beautiful.  Love the exhaust all nice and golden as well as that brake rotor.  And the shine is blinding.    Were you able to just modify the stock brake arm or was it built from scratch?  Regardless, it came out very nice.

What would you take for a set of those dog bones.  I have no facilities to make a set here. 

Good on ya,

CraigO

I can not take credit for the custom brake arm.

I found out about it from Alan (Firehawk 068) when he did his 17" FZR wheel swap.
Read his post here : http://www.fjowners.com/index.php?topic=2828.0.

This topic has the link to the vendor for the brake arms.

http://www.cycleoneoff.com/v-maxpartspage1.html

Not really sure about  the dog bones.
I felt I followed the advice I had picked up from this site as to what the people here were making the dog bones out of.

If I have misunderstood, I'm all ears to find out what material I need to get to make the proper dog bones.

By the way, I didn't use a drill press to make mine.
I cut them to length using a hack saw, drilled the first one (both holes), then used vise grips to hold the second piece and then drilled through that one.
Holes match perfectly. Then I rounded the ends with a grinder and painted them.
Nothing complicated about them.

Leon

[Grey runner]

I made some dog bones exactly the way you did Leon, in 60.000 miles they have not caused me any trouble so I sure yours will be fine as well.
It's just a suggestion but you might like to get one of these to go with the polished wheel, it could really add the finishing touch.

http://www.bikefarmmv.de/EN/chain-guard/zeige_artikel.php?fid=200935

[1tinindian]

I made some dog bones exactly the way you did Leon, in 60.000 miles they have not caused me any trouble so I sure yours will be fine as well.
It's just a suggestion but you might like to get one of these to go with the polished wheel, it could really add the finishing touch.

http://www.bikefarmmv.de/EN/chain-guard/zeige_artikel.php?fid=200935

Thanks, that's good to know that the dog bones have lasted you that many miles!

And about that chain guard, you are a man after my own heart, I love the looks of that.
I would be interested in it, but the difference in currancy has me wondering about the cost.
Great idea though!

Leon

[FJmonkey]

What material did you make your dog bones from? I hope you stayed away from mild steel (HR, HRPO) or 304 SST. Soft as warm crap. They will work for a while but will stretch till they fail. CRS (1018) should be OK as long as you protect them from corrosion. At my work we have been dong R&D with a material called Domex. Crap that stuff is strong. HRPO and 304 SST has a tensile strength near 30ksi, Domex is 100ksi (amazing what alloying steel with Titanium will do). If we start using it I will try to offer dog bone sets for cost to club members. Maybe I should sell them to Randy and work out a wholesale deal with other parts of his I might want (Emulators...), I love my fork brace.

1/4" x 1" steel from Menards.
As far as the technical description goes... I have no idea.
Leon

This is not definitive but worth a read.
http://www.fjowners.com/index.php?topic=2792.msg22472#msg22472

I would consider the material from Menard's to be a mild steel Hot Rolled (HR) or HR Pickled and Oiled (HRPO) unless it was marked as CRS Cold Rolled Steel.  Get a thinner and wider piece of steel and cut a notch in it that just fits over the dog bones the long way with no slop. When you have the rear wheel off slip the check tool over both links. If they are stretching, the check tool will not fit over the links. Time to make stronger ones. If the tool slips over each one then they have not stretched. Check each time you have wheel off. Cheep insurance and peace of mind.

[1tinindian]

 I really appreciate the in depth detail being put into the metal to be used as dog bone replacements.

With ALL the discussion being done in the past here on the forums, there must be several riders here that have made their dog bones out of the same type of steel I used, yet we only have Randys off road hop to turn the thoughts to a better quality metal?

Although building a mod with better material is a great idea, ( and one I totally agree with), it would be interesting to here from a wide variety of riders and their experiences with their home-made bones and the material they used, how longs it's been in use, and any trouble that may have been experienced.

With that being said, and it is proven to be bad in any way to use mild steel, might I suggest that the forums be "cleaned up" on this topic, and the proper material listed. It would save alot of time and people will not have wasted theirs in making "inferior" dog bones.

I say this because I spend a large amount of time on this forum reading older posts, and  the mod section is one of my favorites, (along with the search feature), and nearly everywhere I look it seems, the topic of dog bones is one of something easy and cheap to do with minimal fuss.

Now, I'm here to report on my progress, and it seams that I have not done it right, due to the type of material I used.

Is there a chronic problem here, or are we just over thinking things?
Has there been anyone else have a home-made dog bone failure other than Randy?
Considering his off road jump is well outside the norm for FJ use, are we all safe using our mild steel bones?

These are just questions to clear up any misunderstanding on my part, as well as maybe serve well for others in the future, to benefit from.

Thank you very much for the assistance.

Leon

[Pat Conlon]

Dunno Leon. Does anyone know what type of steel Yamaha uses for the bones? We could always take a oem dogbone and send it in for some destructive testing.
The next time you have your mild steel bones off to lube your linkage, measure the links, take a look at the holes, are they elongated? No? I wouldn't worry.
I think it is absolutely critical the the holes line up on the links, so each link carries a equal share of the tension.

[Arnie]

I made 12cm C-to-C dogbones out of 5mm x 25mm mild steel in Sept 2000. 
In Jan '09 (8 3/4 yrs)  49,000kms (33,000 miles) later I took them off because I changed the shock and needed different length dogbones.  The holes were still round (by eye) and the mild steel strap had not stretched.  I made the new dogbones out of the same material.
YMMV

Arnie

[FJmonkey]

This is good conversation, makes me think two things. One, how general is the "Mild steel" category, CRS (bar stock), HR, HRPO (also bar stock) that we buy from stores like Menards? How strong do the "Dog-Bones" need to be? Looking at the parts diagrams and from the design of the link they must be in tension (as apposed to compression). So the tensile strength of the metal is key to having strong enough bones. Corrosion protection is a plus as this is a terrible place to be metal part. I did some surfing to better understand the difference of some of the steels mentioned. HRPO, the stuff my work uses millions of pounds each year has a tensile strength between 44Ksi and 52Ksi, CRS is about 63.8Ksi and the 318 SST mentioned in another thread is 70 to 75Ksi. The Domex we might use in the near future is 110Ksi. The difference between HR and CRS is not that great. It may be suitable for our FJ's. I would caution this, if you do not know what steel you have then check them time to time for stretching or as Pat pointed out "hole elongation" (from round to oval). Kookaloo safe everyone.