I took some time this morning to shift gears and play with the front brake. I had picked up a Virago 250 caliper and an Kawasaki 125 Eliminator disc just pretty much randomly, to see what might work. Then I realized that I was doing things the hard way. They probably were no better than the original single-piston caliper and chunky rotor that came stock on the GS650L, so why reinvent the wheel? I found a disc from a 550 that would bolt up to my wheel on Ebay for $12 shipped, so I ordered that. They used the same disc pattern on everything for years. Except that I didn’t do quite enough research. Even though it bolts up, the ’84 GS550 had a sixteen-inch front wheel, so Suzuki shrunk the OD of this disc by 15mm. Which means it’s too small to fit a stock caliper. But what if I could make the Virago caliper work? I held it up to the wheel to see. The bracket and the fork bosses interfere, so I couldn’t put the bracket quite where I’d want it, but,…
Here it is properly positioned on the disc.
And here’s about where it would sit in relation to the fork (only slightly farther toward the center) if I were to modify it and make a bracket.
It would end up looking something like this (a photo of a caliper swap I found on the web):
Didn’t seem that bad, until I went back and read this in John Robertson’s book, Motorcycle Tuning: Chassis—
Okay, then!
No matter what I do with this particular combination of disc, caliper, and fork leg, I can’t feed the braking force in between the two fork leg bolt bosses…not even close.
I think I’ll chalk this up to experience, toss those parts in the bin, and go buy the proper parts. Not worth a trip to the hospital over a $12.00 part.
