I decided it was about time to do the good old dual disc swap using the stock fork legs and an extra caliper and disc and this was the bike to do it on. I had all the parts, or so I thought. I sent three rotors, two fronts and one rear, out to Goddfrey for drilling and thinning...not required but man does he do beautiful work. Here is the rear.
KIMG0098 by
Sean Barney, on Flickr
He also sells a trick little inexpensive kit to get your speedo drive to work with the extra front disc. Highly recommended and Goddfrey is truly a pleasure to deal with.
I had decided to use k2-k6 calipers as I have plenty of extra's and one was all rebuilt ready to go. I only had the one F caliper. Unfortunately, after the k calipers were all rebuilt and polished, I discovered that a K caliper will not work on the right fork leg. They work fine on the right. It is because the pivot arm has a different bend to it and you cannot interchange the k and f pivot arms either. I also discovered that, even though cb550 calipers look the same, they are much smaller in several dimensions. Luckily, Ekpent saved the day with a spare F caliper just a couple miles away.
The caliper on the right leg is not a bolt on and I spent a few weeks fiddling around getting everything to work. I really don't even remember exactly what had to be done to get it right. I had to shim my caliper towards the wheel to get it aligned. Here are pics. Wish I had better ideas about what the hell was really going on.
mmm them Goddfrey discs
KIMG0118 by
Sean Barney, on Flickr
Here you can see the difference between the caliper arms of a k2-k6 versus the f. Whats wacky is either will work on the f's left leg, but the k won't work on the right.
KIMG0124 by
Sean Barney, on Flickr
oh yeah...you can see here that the k caliper must be shimmed out so much that it hits the spokes
KIMG0121 by
Sean Barney, on Flickr
I used stainless washers which, here, are electrical taped into a single stack for installation ease. I think this pic is with the k2-6 caliper arm, so I ended up with less shim for the f arm.
KIMG0122 by
Sean Barney, on Flickr
It was totally worth it in the end. I finished up with braided stainless lines from Earl's and a used ebay 16mm Suzuki Bandit master. I initially tried a 14mm and couldn't get a firm lever. This bike stops better than my cb750 with gl1000 front end and a 16mm cb750f2 master.