Pissed 'n Broke

God I've become lazy with the site lately!

I came across this the other night at the SR500 club meeting.



Now THAT'S what's technically called "Fucked".

Big time.

It was only noticed when the bike lost compression. But apparently the bike isn't in too bad nick apart from that. I'd have thought a bottom end flush out/fucked oil pump/rooted top end sort of thing might be called for, but there you go.

On another note the Pirelli Sport tyres that I've got on the SR are going well, now they're wearing in and I'm not falling off all the time.

Big Bottom

When I first started looking at wider wheels and better tyre choices I wasn't a fan of it's looks. But after I looked at more and more and more I started to love what it did to the profile of the bike, the wide choice of tyre options it opens and the view from behind...

Lovely stuff. The guys on the SR500 forum have been answering some of my stupid questions and they seem to say that changing to 17"s was the best handling change they made to their bikes. I think they were coming from the bike 19" loops, but hey, most new sportsbikes run 17" rims, so there's gotta be something to it anyway.

http://www.sr500forum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1674&start=20

And some more examples...

It's not all that often the Japanese will relace a wheel. Most of the time they seem to do straight swaps with XJR400's or something similar, changing swingarms as well as mags. That way they seem to be pushing 4.25-4.5 inch rims and that opens up Pilot Powers and all sorts of stuff.

When they do change rims the standard sizes appear to be 3" fronts and 4" rears. Any wider than around a 140 rear and you start to get clearance problems with the chain.

I found the one below on a blog somewhere. This one is actually running a 110 front. It looks like they've just laced the rear 18" wheel to the front. Makes sense actually, but you'd be losing out a little by not changing it to a 17" as well.

And here's a bit of a more traditional style cafe SR with the wider rims...

Hmm.

Anyway, half out of curiosity and half with the intention of changing my bike over to wider wheels i'm doing a bit of research about building some wheels. Thankfully I've got a mate who has built a fair few over the years while racing motocross who would be able to help me out.

Either I can spend a couple of hundred bucks up front and get a set of DID rims and stainless spokes from Japan and use my hubs...

Or alternately, and maybe more likely, I'll start searching around for some SR400 front and rear hubs that I'll tidy up, get powdercoated/painted and start looking for some cheapo stainless spokes and 36-hole rim. I'll have to do some more research on what spokes etc, but if I've just got a spare set of hubs sitting around I can do it in my own time.

More musings on tyres and wheels coming shortly.