17inch wheels upgrade, plus few other mods (for now)

[misiek93]

Hello everyone,
I've owned by vmax for about a year now, which is about the same time as I've been on this forum. All this time looking for ideas and what other people have done to their bikes to improve them. What I found out is that the max needs major help in the handling department and one of the best ways to do it is to upgrade to a modern suspension.

As I was reading more and more posts it also dawned on my that there is no easy way to do this. My original plan was to put a set of Carrozerias on my bike and progressive springs, however that plan was quickly abandonded when it became apparent (to me) that those wheels are discontinued and the rear wheel is all but impossible to get :bang head:.

With that I moved on to plan B, which was to just get an 18inch rear. The problem was the weight of the wheel and the price. After a lot of research and phone calls/emails I decided that if I'm going to spend that much money on wheels I want something that doesn't look stock.

At this point I was about to give up on the whole idea of radials on my bike when I stumbled upon a thread by a fellow countryman Satariel666 (Prez), and his conversions of GSXR wheels to fit the vmax. That got me thinking, maybe I could put GSXR wheels on my bike, the only problem (again) is that I really don't like the way the vmax looks with the 3 spoke wheels, but than a light bulb went off in my head and I started to think that if the GSXR wheels can be converted than why not other wheels as well. Well, a few emails later, and some "negotiations" with Przemek I boxed the my wheel from my zx10 and off it went to Przemek.

I forgot to mention that I sold my 05 zx10 track bike few weeks before and had spare wheels and suspension just laying there in my garage. unk:

Here are few pictures of my bike all stock and pretty.

Sorry for the crappy picture qualite all were taken with my phone.

More to follow:

 

[misiek93]

With the wheel off to Poland there was no turning back now so I started to take things apart. Nothing really difficult here, just taking things off in order. The only difficult part I had was removing two of the rotor bolts from the original wheel (I'm using stock rear brake/rotor for now). I finally had to cut them off.

Here's few pictures of the bike being taken apart.

 

[CaptainKyle]

Looks like your having fun with it. I really like the ZX 10 wheel. I would trade my Kosman for one in a heartbeat !

 

[misiek93]

With the original parts removed from the bike and rear wheel being worked on, I turned my attention to the front end. I found a thread on this forum about some using triple trees from a zx14. I figured the zx10 triples had to be pretty close so if his fit, why not mine. So I got the local shop to machine fork extensions for me (cost me a case of beer :clapping, they also cut off that ugly ignition mount off of the zx10 tripples. I got it all home, (didn't compare to original tripples, I was too excited to fit them on my bike), I reversed the triples only to find out the steering stem is aout 2 inches to short :bang head:. Back to the drawing board, I'm having a new set of triples machined, they will be stock turing radius with all the stock mounting holes for gauges and such but will have larger openings to accept the larger zx10 shocks. I didn't bother doing the dropped down triples since I already have fork extensions made.

I guess I'm the type of the guy that needs to find out something doesn't work the hard way :confused2:. I'm still waiting for the guy to finish the triples, hopefully I will have them by this weekend so I can finally put my bike togeter and RIDE :rocket bike:

In the mean time, more goodies came in to cheer me up. The KOSO digital speedo and SST shift light :eusa_dance:

 

[misiek93]

Looks like your having fun with it. I really like the ZX 10 wheel. I would trade my Kosman for one in a heartbeat !

Oh yea, no question about it, I'm already thinking about what else I can do. I actually called Kosman to see if they would do the conversion since they are in the States, but they wanted 2 days worth of machine time :rofl_200:. I can't say enough good things about the work that Przemek did, yes it took a while to get the wheel back due to shipping time, but even with shipping costs it was about half the price I would have to pay for a new wheel.

I'll be posting some pictures of his work pretty soon.

 

[misiek93]

Finally, the rear wheel came back:th_image003:so I can move on and get one step closer to riding again. Let me tell you, the wheel came out GREAT!. The work that Prez did is super nice, he even touched up the paint on the wheel, you can't even tell anything was welded in there. We ran into one issue where he needed to modify the rear brake. That was no problem he modified one that he had and I sent him my old stock one. Overall, the whole process was a breeze and Prez is a pleasure to deal with.

Here's some crapy phone pictures of the finished product (the pictures don't do it justice) oh yea, please don't give me crap about the tires, I only had slicks laying arond and since I didn't know if a 190 will actually fit into the standard swingarm I put the slick back on to see. I'm planning on getting new tires as soon as the bike is all assembled.

 

[misiek93]

Overall the rear wheel insalled fairly easily. The biggest pain was trying to fit the drive shaft into the yolk (not sure if that's the proper name) by the engine. I think I ran out of curse words on that one :damn angry: after about an hour of trying to hold everything up with one hand and trying to make the drive shaft align with the yolk I dropped it and what do you know, the drive shaft actually comes out from the rear diff, how did I miss that :ummm: After that happened it took about 10 minutes to have it back in the swingarm correctly and everything else bolted up pretty easily after that. The only other issue I have is that the rear caliper will not fit onto the rotor while its bolted to the wheel. The bleed screw on the left side of the caliper sticks out too much, no big deal, I unbolted the rotor while the wheel was in the swingarm, put the caliper over it and bolted it back on. Everything else fits like it should.

Here's some pictures of the rear whell installed.

 

[misiek93]

The offset is not too bad either, the picture I have is at a weird angle which makes it look worse than it actually is. I do have a 190/55/17 tires on it now and it fits. On the left side there is plenty of room, on the right side I installed a washer between the swingarm and the caliper bracket and now I can fit an envelope between the tire and the swing arm, I think that should be enough :ummm:.

Does anyone know what is the minimum clearance needed? Not sure if the tires expand a little when driving or not.

As for the offset, I'd say it's about 1/4 inch to the right, but it doesn't look like it's much worse than stock. I know there's offset in the stock whell but I have no idea how much.

 

[misiek93]

I can't wait until I get all the front end parts back. I can already picture it in my mind all finished and ready to ride :biglaugh: I should be getting everything this week but for now I have to use my imagination. I'll keep adding as things progress.

 

[gamorg02]

The offset is not too bad either, the picture I have is at a weird angle which makes it look worse than it actually is. I do have a 190/55/17 tires on it now and it fits. On the left side there is plenty of room, on the right side I installed a washer between the swingarm and the caliper bracket and now I can fit an envelope between the tire and the swing arm, I think that should be enough :ummm:.

Does anyone know what is the minimum clearance needed? Not sure if the tires expand a little when driving or not.

As for the offset, I'd say it's about 1/4 inch to the right, but it doesn't look like it's much worse than stock. I know there's offset in the stock whell but I have no idea how much.

if you can fit an envelope you're fine. if the tire does expand it'll just rub a bit of the metal /coating away, and then it'll fit fine! heh

i know morleys put ones on that are touching let alone have an envleop of clearance.

i have about the same for what its worth.

 

[gamorg02]

great work, both you and prez by the way. looks phenominal. the spoke pattern of those and cazz's fit the bike beautifulaly... i love my '85 rear kosman too tho!

 

[satariel666]

Im glad you are happy!
I was running some problems with that rim but nothing that i cant jump over!

I was not sure about your swingarm so I made this rim with more offset then usual - to be sure about proper fitment. I bealive that would never be a problem.
Usualy when I have swingarm on hand and can match it to min offset.

 

[misiek93]

if you can fit an envelope you're fine. if the tire does expand it'll just rub a bit of the metal /coating away, and then it'll fit fine! heh

i know morleys put ones on that are touching let alone have an envleop of clearance.

i have about the same for what its worth.

I'll leave it alone for now, it looks like it will be just fine. I plan on nothing it and bracing over winter anyway for that 200 tire.

 

[misiek93]

Im glad you are happy!
I was running some problems with that rim but nothing that i cant jump over!

I was not sure about your swingarm so I made this rim with more offset then usual - to be sure about proper fitment. I bealive that would never be a problem.
Usualy when I have swingarm on hand and can match it to min offset.

I'm very happy with the way it turned out. The offset is not bad at all. Actually what I was thinking is to cut off less than 1/4 inch of the swingarm (where it bolts to the frame on the left hand side) and use the same width washer on the right side. That would move the rim over to the left just a hair, do you think that would work?

This is not something I'm planning on even worrying about right now but maybe a winter project. The way it sits now you can't really notice it.

 

[satariel666]

I'm very happy with the way it turned out. The offset is not bad at all. Actually what I was thinking is to cut off less than 1/4 inch of the swingarm (where it bolts to the frame on the left hand side) and use the same width washer on the right side. That would move the rim over to the left just a hair, do you think that would work?

This is not something I'm planning on even worrying about right now but maybe a winter project. The way it sits now you can't really notice it.

You can get yourself a second left swingarm pivot which is ajustable and by this you can move the whole swingarm to the left by even 5mm.

 

[misiek93]

You can get yourself a second left swingarm pivot which is ajustable and by this you can move the whole swingarm to the left by even 5mm.

Thanks. I'll look into it, that's a better idea than what I had.

 

[[email protected]]

Bike is looking good misiek. Great job on the rim Przemek.

 

[satariel666]

Thanks. I'll look into it, that's a better idea than what I had.

I bealive you can also shave the bearing>pivot spacer a little but, you gonna need to verify that by yourself - nice job on the bike BTW - keep it up!

Bike is looking good misiek. Great job on the rim Przemek.

Thx!

 

[misiek93]

Bike is looking good misiek. Great job on the rim Przemek.

Thanks, appreciate that.

 

[misiek93]

I bealive you can also shave the bearing>pivot spacer a little but, you gonna need to verify that by yourself - nice job on the bike BTW - keep it up!


Thx!

I'll figure something out, it's not really that big of a deal for me at the moment. My goal is to have bike put back together before the baby comes in 4 weeks :biglaugh: