Wes Cooley Suzuki Brakes

Now is not a time...what time do you close?

 

Wow, you guys sure know how to hijack a thread. Anyway, all the aftermarket brake stuff is great but way too expensive for me and more than I've got into the whole bike. So now I'm collecting cheap parts on eBay and will mix/match (and no doubt fab some brackets) until something works. This is going to take a while, but I did a similar thing years ago, grafting Interceptor wheels and brakes to a '78 CB750 cafe project. Stopped on a damn dime, as the buyer later learned on his gravel driveway whilst he flew over the bars. Thanks for everyone's input!

 

It's a Charles thing, normally Buff would step in and whack our collective peepee but he's probably busy falling off one of those pedal bikes...

What about a first gen GSXR 750 front end with 17s fore and aft?

 

Lawson also used six piston brakes for at least one race. We are not permitted to use them even though the were used on his bike and many Go Karts .

I use Suzuki four piston GSXR brakes on my WERA Lawson Replica and AP twin piston for that other organization. They both work well. You just pull a little harder with the AP"s.

 

I think we're all bozos on this bus.....

If yer stuck with 2 piston calipers think about the Brembos too. They worked well. I dunno about making the bike to the "other guy" rules and penalize yourself at every wera race. I'd build it to who ever's specs I race with the most. Yeah the period look is cool and I'm a sucker for that, but you have to ride the thing and not hate it.
Maybe it's just me but I'm over having stuff that looks better sitting in the garage than it works for whatever it was for.

following the yellow rubber line...........

Nick Danger, Third Eye

 

This man makes sense on several thousand different levels...Antelope Freeway, 1/4 mile...

 

Try some F3 or F2 calipers. They are 2 piston jobs! they are cheap too! Just throwing that out there! good luck and keep the faith! Good luck! just remember to try and get the master sized right! I went through that and it makes it tough to slow them down! LOL!

Steven VFR #52 (L) 2001 V-6

 

If you want the period look i raced w/grimeca's on my old honda superbike,lockheed copy i can't believe they're still only $100 a side for the calipers.


http://www.pingelonline.com/grimeca_brake_calipers.htm

 

Damn, I forgot they still have those things around.

 

The brakes used on the Yosh 1000S (and most of the rest of the Japanese 1000 Supernikes) were Lockheed calipers and rotors. I worked for Pierre DesRoches back then tuning the Racecrafters KZ1000 S1 and those are the brakes we had on it. At the time they were the trickest stuff out there. Now......just expensive old stuff!

I think Yosh put a modified RG500 fork on that bike, if I remember right. I wish I had taken notes and more photos back then, but I was 21 and it never occired to any of us that there would EVER be a collectible Jap bike...

TimO

 

Wow, I should have used spell check. How about Superbikes and occured.

Sorry

TimO

 

Thanks, Tim. That's good to know info. I'm not having much luck yet on finding a brake solution. Talking with vintagebrake.com and got some advice from a guy in the UK about using early GSXR cals (still one piston, though), but nothing difinitive yet. Still collecting lots of parts for the conversion to racing at this juncture, so I've got time to figure it out. The real issue is there is very little distance between the caliper mounts and the cast wheel spokes, otherwise I would just pick up some later calipers and fab some mounts. Going to a spoked wheel may help a little and that way I can replace the 19" "wagon wheel" with an 18" wheel that might turn better. Stay tuned...

 

if you are running stock GS1000 forks, an easy and effective upgrade is to use twin piston EX500 calipers and EBC HH brake pads. The calipers that you want are from a variety of late 80's/early 90's Kawasakis. They are "side specific" though, so it's best to look for a set from a ZX7 or a ZX600 from the early 90's. You want the calipers that have different size caliper pistons for the front and back. You also want to run two of the "single disc" Suzuki rotors since they are a slightly larger diameter than the dual disc rotors. The caliper bolts to the stock upper fork location and then you need a spacer and a strap to mount the lower bolt.

You can find some details here:

http://www.thegsresources.com/_forum/showthread.php?t=140253&highlight=ex500+caliper

This guy made the kits for awhile, but I found that they didn't line up correctly with the Suzuki rotors. Since my club does not allow the use of floating discs on vintage bikes, I used the stock Suzuki fixed rotors and fabbed my own lower mount.

With a 5/8" bore MC and the EBC HH pads (EBC129HH if I remember correctly) the big GS has some stopping power.

Tracy

 

This is the most detailed article about the Yosh GS1000 I've ever seen:

http://www.slcelectronics.com/GS1000_Build/Yoshi-article/

 

Many thanks, Tracy! That's just what the doctor ordered. I'm tracking the parts down on eBay now. A great solution.

 

Thanks, Borderline. I have this article, but this is a much getter copy. I appreciate it!

 

Here's a pic of the mounting system that I used. Pretty simple stuff. The lower mount is just a piece of strap steel with a bolt and nut thru the bottom fork sanction. Then the strap comes over to the caliper mount and you put a spacer in that takes up the space between the strap and the caliper mount.

Tracy