Home made Fork Brace

[Chuey]

I would have expected to see a few posts that say what is needed to be paid attention to instead of posts like the ones posted. As in, make sure they are aligned and do not need to be pulled into shape as they are fastened to the fork and go for it.

I have a San Jose fork brace that I've tweaked into shape (it was used, and didn't take much tweaking) on a fork that I had just aligned and it works fine. I'm not a good enough rider to say what the benefits are, but I say go for it.

Chuey

[Duane Ausherman]

Chuey, generally I too encourage owners to take control of their bike and "go for it." In this case, I have seen almost only trouble resulting from an ignorant owner.

Besides, San Jose never warned anybody about needing to know something. Just give us your $$ and slap it on.

Actually the SJ fork brace worked very well............. as a money transfer device.

[vanzen]

Lufty was notorious for selling high-performance parts without including sufficient background information
to allow the amateur-home-mechanic to buy, install, and realize the advertised benefits of the products.
i.e. Lufty assumed that every potential customer was a knowledgeable and capable motorcycle mechanic.
We will single out Lufty in this game because they sold hot-rod bits for BMW motorcycles,
but, I will say that this method of advertising and selling hot-rod after-market parts
is, to this day, an industry standard. Right or wrong ...

Having said that, I have on file in my garage the instruction pages provided by Luftmeister
and included with the 1979 purchase of a "hoop" fork brace for a 1978 BMW R100.
IF these instructions were read and followed – the brace worked quite nicely.
A properly designed and installed fork brace reduces stanchion flex, slider misalignment, and stiction.
The old BMW forks can certainly benefit from that kind of attention, they are quite flimsy.
The BMW factory's continued attention to this very issue in subsequent years
will be proof enough of that fact.

IMO, any problem with hoop braces will be the result of, what Duane calls, "an ignorant owner".
I'll define two popular scenarios:
1) An I.O. who bought the part and slapped it onto his bike
without any attempt to fit the part.
2) An I.O. who bought the part as "bling"
without having any real need for it's benefits.

"Need" in this second scenario would imply riding the bike in such a way
as to encounter the mechanical limits of stock chassis design
and some reason to extend those limits.
Quite frankly, if you 'cannot feel a difference' –
you might just as well consider spending your brace money on beer.

Such as it is, however, not all owners are ignorant,
nor will all owners subscribe to one particular riding style.
A motorcycle should be well defined, if not by corporate homogeneous marketing strategy
then by the individual needs of it's rider.
One rider's dismissal as a superfluous "money transfer device"
just may be what keeps another on-line and at speed.

[Roy Gavin]

I put a hoop brace on my well worn G/S and it made a noticeably difference, but as you could see the forks flex before I fitted it , it had plenty to work on.

As an old British iron rider I am well acquainted with the procedure for aligning forks----.

The PO had a custom made U brace folded out of heavy gage SS fitted by a suspension " expert " but it didn't seem to make much difference to the flex but considerably increased stiction.

The ATF the "expert" had put in the forks didnt work well either - Bel Rays finest synthetic 7.5 HVI suspension made a big improvement too.

[Duane Ausherman]

vanzen, +1. Well said. I am just too lazy to do the typing, so thanks. In typing this little bit, I made 6 mistakes and had to correct them.

[Ken in Oklahoma]

vanzen, +1. Well said. I am just too lazy to do the typing, so thanks. In typing this little bit, I made 6 mistakes and had to correct them.

Hmmm, I think seven is the number Duane. Being in a perverse (and presumably temporary) frame of mind I' think I'll keep that seventh one to myself for a bit.


Ken

[Duane Ausherman]

Oops, one I didn't catch and still don't see. Ken, you are a tease, as you know that I can't be embarrassed. Not easily anyway.

[Ken in Oklahoma]

Oops, one I didn't catch and still don't see. Ken, you are a tease, as you know that I can't be embarrassed. Not easily anyway.

OK! OK! You're calling me names now! I have clearly pushed you too far. That a gentleman of your caliber would call me a name means that I have been too provocative, even for the speakeasy were we having this conversation there.

Here it is then: You see, vanzen correctly spells his moniker with a lower case v. However the convention is that the first letter of the first word in a sentence is capitalized, no matter how unpresupposing a word may be. Therefore you should have used a capital V.

In fairness, I suppose, were I arguing your case, I would posit that a convention is a convention, and violation of a convention doesn't make you wrong in an absolute sense. You might be rightly called eccentric or maybe even a rebel, but not wrong.

Pshew, I'm glad I got that off my chest!


Ken

[Duane Ausherman]

And here I was just honoring, uh, Vanzen by using his name as he does. Just for you ken, I will comply with convention.

[Motorhead]

as my Biz picks up parts from time to time I found a box with several San Jose brace parts, I picked out one and went through a pre-fitting and wala had a brace

it worked nice in my restructed /5 as it sorta looked like a /7 Snowflakes /7 tank etc the ride was right on

at the time of new rebuild......... at the ole Boxerworks a thread appeared from Duane about not needing the Brace

I sold the then brace for funds towards a desert campout, Red was runinng very well........ but as I found I needed that brace to not to make the bike stiffer for control but to reinforce what I built a very heavy bike

at one point in a turn I noticed that my handlebar and wheel didn't seem as 90 drgrees but the wheel trailed off behind the force

I looked once again through the box for other San Jose bits and came up with 1 more set

with this I made another... but added a tube front to back, and added fender mounts, I did another pre-fitting
and that how it is today even with the return to Drum brakes Now the fork work toward the ride

Testing in SWB brought up some NEW ideas as the bike handles faster and tighter

as I'm sorta redoing the bike Red will now be Fred LOL