THANK YOU -yes! KIMTAB rims - I think I yapped about 'em, but forgot the name - I remember yesterday digging through my library of pirated photos trying to find a reference to the name -
And YEAH them plasma coated alloy rotors were the #$%* too. Did I forget them? That would be the ideal set-up with a Hurst Airheart rear disc conversion. I guess they supposedly wore out pretty quick, but for shorter track race use, I should think they made a lot of sense. Supposedly some problems with manufacturing though? That the steel layer sometimes flaked right off?
IMHO the trick thing to do, even in this day and age, is still CAST-IRON - would sure love to find a place that'll water-jet cut some Cast-Iron plate. Maybe a couple of old frying pans? Hell I've got all sorts of ideas about frying pans ha-ha. I go 2nd-hand thrift shopping with my kid and while she's looking at clothes & shoes etc, I'm over in the kitchenware section always sizing up Aluminum pots & pans (you'd think the scrap metal collectors would've snapped 'em up but apparently not YET) always looking for the perfect air scoops for the 4LS drums I'm working on here - and this big idea about the GL1500/PC800 wire-spoke "hub" cut-out wheel conversion idea, I always picture it with some old T-fal frying pans for the new rotor shrouds. If you were a fly on the wall you'd have caught me measuring the things with a tape whenever I find one. Needs a matching pair though - Carved up a really nice fruit bowl for air scoops, also did a really thick alloy sauce-pan lid, carved into an extra wide engine-case chain guard for my old 750 - This was all stuff I lost in that house-fire in 2013, but yeah it's funny that cast alloy FRUIT BOWL has become my new Unobtainium these days! I was at the bank on Canada day, they had these cookies out on a table - in a couple of the very same bowls! I was staring at 'em long enough, looking shifty-eyed enough I guess, that the teller finally said "Go ahead - take a cookie, they're free!" ha-ha. I asked her where they got the serving-ware but she said she didn't know. They're OVAL, and higher up on the pointy ends, the little one I had was perfect for a bunch of bananas - or more to the point, when cut in half with it's three little feet amputated it was perfect for some DIY air-scoops over top of the Suzuki GT750J 4LS drum hub, to fit OVER the existing scoops & cover 'em right up. And thick enough around the edges to drill & tap so they could mount to the thing with screws from the inside of the shoe plate. Between that and some T500 linkage & levers, maybe a "pie-crust" treatment to the spoke flanges, you'd never know that it was a Suzuki drum it would look properly exotic. Or at least like it belonged on anything other than a Suzuki.
ANYWAY yeah - I meant to speak to the 4LS drum issue, 'cause like you guys were saying about that Keihin CR carb listing - I caught that one on eBay a while back myself, and I too thought the seller was on crack! Yeah, you CAN get those things new these days, can't you?
Well the same thing's going on with the 4LS drums! I suppose I'm to blame MYSELF for the prices of the Suzuki drums - in the wake of losing everything to that fire, drunk on rum, having smoked something, and of course at the least my usual (or more to the point a lot more, due to all of the stress causing a lot of tension related SPASM in my back) ridiculous whack load of Dilaudid & ancillary muscle relaxants & #$%*e like that - I thought I had discovered the very last 4LS drum on the face of the Earth, and looked at it as though this were my only chance to MOVE FORWARD on the "KZ440LOL" build - and did I neglect to mention my Ex-Daughter's Sweet-Sixteen birthday was looming just a couple of months ahead? Yeah THAT was the main stressor, was being in somewhat of a (fleeting, apparently) RUSH about assembling all of the components I'd lost. So I got together every bit of cash I could scrape together. Even called in a couple of debts from friends & acquaintances ... at such a time that their sympathy was at an all time high due to the fire - normally if I want sympathy I'd look for it in the dictionary between #$%* and syphilis, but this was about the kid's bike!
So yeah, I put in every penny I could muster as a reserve bid, imbibed a whole lot more of said substances, and passed out while watching the auction time out. Funny thing, when I woke up and figured out what had happened, I was actually HAPPY to have won the auction! Ha-ha. Even though I'd paid DOUBLE for this specimen of Suzuki 4LS drum, what I'd paid the last time.....
So anyway yeah - if you've ever asked yourself "Who in #$%* is paying these prices?" it was ME - just the one time. Which is why all the rest of 'em linger on fleabay for ages & ages.
But I'm not just talking about the dinky lil' 200mm Suzuki drum. There's a Fontana 210mm listed out there, which the guy's asking something like TEN GRAND for it! Granted, a while back there was another hub listed at that price which MIGHT have been worth it, being that it was an original Magnesium Yamaha 260mm drum and a very rare model at that, one of the short-term production odd-ball racers of mid-'60s production (as opposed to late '60s through mid-'70s etc) I don't recall the model, but yeah the side-plate of this particular drum is one solid piece with a proper air-scoop and a whole bunch of large round holes drilled in the trailing side of the plate - I've only ever seen a couple of black & white photos of that particular bike, like maybe cut out of a newspaper.
Ya'll know the one I mean?
But yeah - so ignoring THAT auction, there's currently this Fontana 210mm drum in a Borrani 18 or 19" WM2 or WM3 rim - and the price is somewhat ridiculous. I don't get the impression at all that this is a Magnesium hub.
But the POINT, is that the available Magnesium reproduction Fontana 210 heck even a Fontana 250mm, plus an NOS rim and new stainless spokes (or nickel-coated brass, whatever type of spokes you'd WANT is my point) and maybe even some Titanium hardware with hollowed out shafts done by a local machinist etc etc - would all set you back LESS than what this guy's asking for the thing! It doesn't even have one of those "Elvis' Guitar" stories attached to it. They just weighed the thing and looked on the stock market pages for rare metals to see what raw Unobtainium ORE is going for by the ounce, and doubled it!
Another thing that got my goat about replacing the NOS stuff for my KZ project here, was I put out a request with some decent NOS dealers I'd dealt with in the past, asking for THEM to ask THEIR guys, for some more 3.00x16" Borrani "Rinforzatto" rims. And I got 'em, again for double what I'd paid before - which was still pretty damn good actually being that I'd got such a good deal.
While I was at it though, I also got a swinging deal on some NOS belt-drives for the KZ440LTD, which IMHO is the trickest part on my build but more to the point:
There are dozens of listings out there for the NOS rear pulleys of any type, asking upwards of FOUR HUNDRED BUCKS for the damn things!
Well I actually scored MINE for $50ea, a bit more for the front pulleys, and belts at just over $125ea - meaning I scored my NOS belt-drives for around what I'd pay for a really good O-ring chain & sprockets. Considering they're supposed to last three times as long, and that they transmit some 5%-10% more power to the rear wheel than a chain does - I figure that was a heck of a deal. Albeit, achieved by LIVING on eBay 24/7 for weeks at a time ha-ha.
Seriously though - $400 for a rear pulley when nobody's got belts? When most of the used pulleys out there barely have one belt's worth of wear on 'em, and are supposed to last for two or three belts ie the life of the damn engine? WTF.
There's actually a far better part to use for that application though, and that's the rear pulley from the water-cooled version the KZ454LTD - it's really cool because it's just a thin ring of pulley teeth mounted to an integrated sprocket carrier ("coupling assembly" in Kawasaki speak) and pulley center carrier - I wanna use one and carve up the carrier into some type of extraction vane, so as to suck massive air flow through the drum on the other side of the hub!
I know this might sound like it's waaaaaay off topic, but IMHO the belt-drives were some seriously legit performance parts. Though of course, they were for a Kawasaki twin (KZ750B, KZ440LTD ... oh and I guess the KZ440G KZ305CSR, and GPZ305) they're STILL some pretty awesome tech for 1979 and IMHO folks should give 'em a 2nd glance.
If I could get one onto my Honda, I'd do it in a heart-beat. I suppose the trick would be to machine out the center of the drive pulley so that it fits the Honda shaft, then either adapt the pulley to a Honda hub or do a wheel swap, then shorten/lengthen the swing-arm to suit the ratio.
No it's NOT a Honda part, but would be a period-correct modification at least for the DOHC stuff ... or maybe as early as '77-'78 actually....
Whatever - just an example of how ridiculous the NOS prices are getting.
Thing is, I was parts hunting on fleabay for two-three years PRIOR to losing that stuff in the fire of 2013, so I've actually been watching this stuff, consistently every damn day mind you, for over five years maybe more!
And I'll let you in on a little secret: The SAME STUFF is listed today as the day I joined fleabay! I mean - WTF.
Well enough from me - but yeah thank you - "KIMTAB" rims! That was gonna eat away what's left of my brain just digging the word from distant memory. Not to mention the Hunt/Kosman plasma-coated-Aluminum rotors....
-S.
Post-Script:
Oh and to answer Terry's Query - It's not at all like the long drawn-out ordeal you imagined. I type at least as fast as I talk. Took typing in highschool YEARS before I began to use it online. Though I guess I was using a computer a good decade before that, on the Apple & Apple II - ANYWAY yeah I was already typing pretty quick unlike so many young folks I know who have learned to type FROM the internet, and who hold on to some nasty habits. My mom types some 250wpm from way back in the '60s, though for a certified number from typist accrediting outfits I believe she has some cards around that state 180wpm from when she was 18 or 19 - Keeping in mind, that's on an old-fashioned mechanical typewriter where each key-stroke is a good inch & a half long! She types a lot quicker than me even today but my point is that I've had a proper teacher around to learn some stuff from, to challenge or even time a typing "quiz" once on a blue moon! Often makes me think of that old Candice Bergman movie - she was HOT it was an old '60s flick and she was maybe 18 or 19 herself - either way there's this scene where she gets a job and they take her to the typing pool to start working, and it's this huge room full of desks with all of these knock-out hotties with bee-hive hairdos all of 'em typing like machine-guns - of course our Heroine can't friggin' stand it and gets the hell out of there, climbs the ladder & finds her GLASS CEILING blah-blah-blah....
One more important factor for my typing, is that I don't use spell-check at all, and if I've made a mistake I'll rappity-tap on the delete button and re-type the whole passage, even if it's a sentence or two backward. I find it a lot quicker than using the forward & back arrows then waiting to see where the cursor has wound up. See, with that kind of ... self abuse ha-ha - "discipline", if you will - I hammer home the necessity of spelling well & using good grammar. So for many years now, my spell-check only pops up when I'm using technical jargon which I haven't added to my laptop's dictionary yet. Or when the area code thingy switches from British/Canadian English to Americanese.
Just sayin' - what might seem like a daunting task of home-work is actually a result of a whole lot of prior typing to where it's become easy as breathing. Not that breathing's always easy.
This is probably why I wind up pissing off certain forum users too, is 'cause it's not just that I type faster than I talk, it's that I type faster than I THINK. Ha-ha.
