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Front Wheel setup

Id forgotten how much work it is setting up a different front wheel...

This was supposed to be a job taking a few hours, that I was hoping to finish today...A few months ago I bought a 16" twin disc harley mag wheel that Im gonna swap for the 19" spoked that Ive had on for a few years (8..)Last time I did a front tire I noticed the spoked wheel was running about a 8mm out of true, as well as having a few dents in the rim from some good size potholes out in western NSW. I thought id go to a tubeless so if I get a flat I can fix it with one of the kits ya can get...First off tho, heres a shot of the pipes newly covered in fibreglass wrap that I got from the States off ebay...Im too tight to buy new pipes, and the old ones have been looking a bit scruffy, so it was a cheapish solution....Looks better, and was only mildly embarrassing when I pulled into the local garage for a pink slip., and they were smoking away furiously as the resin burnt out...

Anyway I put the bike up on the jack that Ive had since Scotties Choppers was Highland Dynamics, and pulled the front wheel off.Then I had to remove the discs for fitting to the mag...

Air ratchet save heap of work for lazy man...

Once they were off I put 2 bolts  in each side to hold the discs to the 'new' wheel.

I suspected I was going to have issues with everything fitting here, as the flanges that hold the discs distance apart seemed to be a few mm different from the spoked wheel, tho its bloody hard to measure accurately...I remembered having problems centering the calipers when I originally fitted the spoke wheel, and having to relieve some material from part of one caliper to stop it scraping...

This time I seem to have an issue with the caliper spacer on one side needing to have about 2 mm relieved off it , but I dont own a milling machine unfortunately...

So it was into the drill press and use a grinding stone...I could set the depth and grid away merrily.. albeit slowly..took about 40 minutes to get about 1.5mm off...but surprisingly did a fairly neat job..

However putting it back on the bike it had helped, but I noticed the wheel wasn't really sitting evenly between the bottom legs...a few mm closer to the lhs than the right...so its a change of direction for a while. I need to set the axel spacers up so the wheel is centered first, then get the calipers to fit. Of course I don't have any material handy for making axel spacers...Ill have to head to Bunning's for some 3/4" washers, get it right then get spacers the right size( or leave the washers there for 5 years more likely...)

Damo explains where I've been going wrong...

Anyway this little effort took about 3 1/2 hrs, and its stinking hot and Im sick of being blinded by the sweat, so Ill tackle it again tomorrow...

Jax providing entertainment..

where the hell did those glasses go...!