Topic: 350f top triples.

[faux fiddy]

I have talked with the machinists and provided a broken unit and we are tossing around ideas for making a billet top triple clamp. Don't hold your breath but something will likely be on the way soon.  We will be looking for cheap aluminum scrap on e-bay, thinking of sawing out as many triangles from a shoe box sized chunk of material. It will be done on either a hitachi or deckel mayo cnc.

It will take a  fairly large chunk of aluminum, and one suggestion is to use old clamps for the risers which add a couple of inches to the heighth needed
for the blank of metal. (core returns?)  Another thing he suggested is put the pinch bolts on the inner side of the fork tubes. I think it will take months, but a prototype is on the way. This is by a guy that has done his share of custom work. And no, not a carpy.  It will have mounts as close to stock as possible for standard guage installation.

The other concerns when doing a series of them is what modern fork tube conversions people might put on, so when the series of them are finally
produced the pinch bolts for the tubes may remain unfinished and special order to spec of the conversion being done.

Any suggestions for this product?

What are the common swaps that people prefer? Should we just make a couple with stock tubes and then a couple for 35mm tubes for 500/550 or 450 fork conversions?  Of course this would involve a whold new front end.

Any suggestions are helpful at this stage of the project. Stupid sounding ideas are sometimes most genius....

[faux fiddy]

Bump.

Does anyone even have any information on any fork swaps besides 350 to 550?

[Rick4004]

Not to deter you, but someone is already doing this http://ttr400.com/photo3_7.html

And, you have already identified one of the other stumbling blocks, most guys looking for billet clamps are also looking for custom offsets/widths to fit different front ends. Makes it hard to do more than one set at a time.

The third stumbling block is this;

Total number of 350F/400F's sold - 100,000
Number left on the road - 50,000?
Guys who want to do stock restorations  - 49,750
Guys who would love to have custom trees - 250
Guys who are willing to pay for custom trees - 5 - 10

Rick Denoon

[faux fiddy]

bump. Thanks for the link.

50,000 Left on the road is probably optimistic.

I think it may happen anyway, might have to check what the link's deal i$.

BTW, Is there anybody racing the 350f's or classes they keep up in?

[754]

If you are gong to do it just buy new aluminum, make SURE what alloy you are using.

[faux fiddy]

The thought is to do a small run, probably a lot like the stock looking one pictured in the link with towers on it,  maybe  with a pinch bolt recessed in  towards the center of the bike.  It would be nice to find a bug scrap, but not likely. Laying out a pattern to cut up a bar of aluminum as efficiently as possible would hopefully lower the cost compared to starting with a chunk for each one.

[Kemp]

Dime City sells them

[faux fiddy]

If you are gong to do it just buy new aluminum, make SURE what alloy you are using.

What is best for the application and what else works?

[754]

6061-T6 is usually what they use..