| Author | Message | ||
     Schemky |
Leopard Spots, My 99 M2 has exhibits "leopard spots" on the front rotor. Braking is still good though, no pulsing or lack of power and feel is good. Should I replace the stock pads with the EBC HH's or leave what I have alone? Have never had a motorcycle disk exhibit this characteristic B-4. | ||
| Hans |
Leopard spots change with the seasons: Dry roads and hard braking turns the disks dark blue, blad fall and prudent driving fades the blue in that irregular pattern and the cool winter with wet and slippery roads and touchy braking polishes the discs again. No worries. Hans. | ||
| Schemky |
Bridgestone BT-010 Tires: Just put new front and rear Bridgestone Battlax BT-010 series tires on my M2. They work great! If you are considering a switch from the Dunlops (which worked very well on my M2), I recommend it. They handle beautifully on mine. I have no idea how they will fare mileage wise. . . time will tell. | ||
| Caboose |
My front rotor also has spots. These spots don't bother me but the front brake has also developed a most annoying squeal while lightly braking. I've got 7000 km's on my 2001 X1, there is still plenty of meat left on the pads. | ||
| Ptown |
Duell brake system for Buell x1 Hello to everyone. I am new to the site as a regestered user but have found many usefull info on it. I do want to change the front brake set up to a duell system and so far got hold of 2 340 mm EBC disc rotors. A while back I came across a website which I lost the info on mentioning that NISSIN has got a left side caliper available for the X1's now. but not much further on the subject. all that I can remember was a name that was mentioned ( Lyonsdunn ) . Can anyone give me more info on this. I am from South Africa living in Germany and besides from the language barrier there aren't all that aftermarket part so easely available as in the USA. please any info will help. | ||
| Tripper |
Lyonsdunn would be Cap. Do a search of the BBS for author = CAP and see if that turns up what you are looking for. edit - PTOWN, here is the post you remembered. CLICK HERE Cap has moved and is out of touch with the BBS, but can be reached at some HD dealer that somebody is going to chime in and tell you where. | ||
| Ptown |
Tripper Tks for the info. As i can recall this site where I read aboth the calipers was inside another site and it did say that the caliper is for the left side and didn't mention that a right side was also to be bought to make a match. Thats why I am so eager to get hold of this site again cause that can make things much easier than fitting 2 brembo's plus mounting brackets. If you can put you brain again in 1st gear and maybe think of a website which host a lot of subfiles I would appreciate. At this moment I am finding it very difficult to get into the ''American Sport bike '' site . As I also wanted to take a look there. Regards Eugene | ||
| Tripper |
PTown - Oh, you mean THE X1 FILES! | ||
| Ptown |
Hey Tripper. Thats it, man you are like a walking index, programme, tks thats it, and oops C that he also speaks about a bracket so I presume 2 calipers must then also be bought, if its a nissan caliper from what bike does it comes of and model. Do you perhaps know what the price is on the brackets, sri to hang everyting on you but would appreciate info on this, the bike kinda look funny with the 2 disc rotors and 1 caliper. tks Eugene | ||
| Tripper |
PTown - I have no personal knowledge of this mod. I have heard some talk of people trying to use calipers from Yamaha R1, but the disk is 320mm, not 340. Someone will chime in here for you soon. But why would you want to add that much weight to your bike? The single disk will flip your bike if needed. | ||
| Ptown |
Tripper. No I do not doubt the power of the Buell's front brake. This all is just a cosmetic affair. The bike just looks so unfinished with the single disc. This kinda design was droped long ago by the Japs and is seen as a cheap solution. an extra pond or two on the front will just force me do do some dieeting, or 3 beers less in a week. tks again for your input and I hope to recieve some feedback. I saw that the Trojan Horse also have a kit available mentioning only one caliper and then it looks like 2 extra mounting brackets that also gets included. I have posted them a queerie about this setup and hopefully will be getting an answer on that. Maybe someone on the site has already fitted this system and will share his experience with me. Tks again and have a good week ahead. Eugene. | ||
| Al_Lighton |
I just replaced my 98 S1W front rotor with a 2000 spec unit. Before doing so, I had the rotor carrier powdercoated nuke blue. The guys at classic coatings did a horrible masking job, had to torch each of the buttons to melt out the powercoat to ensure it floats, lots of work. Still not sure it's floating good, it'll either warp or not. Also, I polished the stock caliper up as good as I could, has lots of nooks and crannies. Modifed the caliper carrier as well with some lightening holes. Before:  After  | ||
| Rocketman |
That looks great Al  Rocket in England | ||
| Tripper |
Al, how much if I send you my forks and calipers? You are the polishing fool! Looks great. | ||
| Al_Lighton |
Trip, It'd cost you my divorce lawyer fees.... Seriously, my wife laughs at me, sitting out in the driveway with my air sander/scotchbrite wheels and the buffing wheel. Polishing aluminum is a pretty messy job, stuff gets thrown everywhere, you get covered in crap. And it's pretty time consuming to do a good job. But I find it somewhat relaxing, actually, watching a piece of rough casting transform into jewelry. Just wish it wasn't so damned noisy/messy. OK as an occasional pastime while thinking about other stuff. Probably a pretty crappy job. reminds me, when I picked up my S3 from Two Brothers, there was one guy who's job it was to polish their mufflers. There was a fenced in area outside, pretty much a cage. That was where he spent his whole day, buffing tube after tube, getting totaly covered in flung rouge. Yuk. Al | ||
| Bluzm2 |
Al, A good source of internet available polishing supplies is http://www.bright-works.com I picked up a set of 8" buffs and compound for alum. last Friday. I used them on my rear rocker box. What a difference using GOOD buffing wheels and compounds vs the crap you get in a hardware store. Their sprial sewn buffs are real tight, 1/4" thread spacing on a 60/60 weave cotton wheel. Really cuts well. After an initial throw off of loose threads they really hold up well. They also have sets for ss. They have a pretty good booklet on do's and dont's for polishing. They also have all the small stuff for the nooks and tight places. The web page has an online catalog. Lots of info. They sell a ton of stuff to the hot rod and custom cars folks. Interesting guy that runs the busness. It's run out of his home. He is a long range touring type guy, he owns 2 Goldwings. Him and the Mrs's will head out for 2 or 3 weeks at a crack a couple of times a year. Lots of interesting stories. Brad | ||
| Blake |
"Modifed the caliper carrier as well with some lightening holes." Call me paranoid if you want, but putting holes into one of the most highly stressed structural components on your bike, especially one of the critical brake system components, may be tempting dissaster. Al, please find a stretch of good clean sticky asphalt with a LONG runoff area and give that front brake a rigorous proof testing a'la repeated stoppies. | ||
| Al_Lighton |
Blake, Appreciate the concern, but I'm certainly not worried about it. Look carefully at the pictures of those caliper holders. It may be that you are deceived by the painted area. In the "shear webs" (sunken area), I added 6 holes of varying sizes (three in each triangle), and the whole sunken area is painted black. At first glance, it might appear that I'd machined away the web. I tried to take a better picture last night, but my USB port on my compuuter for uploading the pic seems to have taken a dump. The shear webs that I put the holes in are over 1/2" thick, and the perimeter is over .8" thick. Seriously beefy. The bolt holes that hold the caliper are very close to the edges of the casting. If forces aren't high enough to cause the mounting bolts to rip out of the casting, they certainly aren't high enough to cause any structural failure related to the holes that I've put in the shear webs. I certanly wouldn't recommend machining substantial amounts of the shear webs away, or machining it with shapes with sharp corners that could cause stress risers, but 6 round holes in those webs aren't going to cause problems. But Blake, I'm disappointed in your response. I expected some numbers and equations! Like assuming a 60mph stoppie, calculate the stopping force at the ground, which is caused by the stopping force at the caliper, which is reacted in a couple between the two caliper mounting bolts. Unless of course you were just trying to give me a good excuse to go do a bunch of stoppies somewhere. I can see it now: LEO: "Mr. Lighton, you realize that doing those maneuvers on public roads is reckless driving, I'm going to have to cite you" Me: "No, no, officer, you've got it all wrong. I'm not doing this for fun, I'm performing structural testing on the advice of a highly respected structural engineer to assure the safety of myself and all those around me. Honest. See, here's his post!" LEO: "Oh, well that's entirely different. In that case, you may want to test those forks with some hard landing wheelies while your at it, Mr. Lighton. Proceed, have a nice day!" | ||
| Mark_In_Ireland |
Looks great Al....I didn't know the Y2K rivots where removeable. What did you do......I cannot check on my brake as it is 400 miles away in another country!! | ||
| Al_Lighton |
Mark, The swaged "buttons" AREN'T removeable on the Y2K rotor. They were supposed to be carefully masked per my instructions to Classic Coatings, they did a pretty crappy job of it. So I had to carefully torch the caliper side of each button to melt/burn out the powdercoat, and then carefully scrape away what was left. They are still fully bonded to the carrier side by the powdercoat, I only freed up the bond on the rotor side. Hopefully, that's enough to prevent warping as the rotor expands radially. So far, no problems, but I've hardly even bedded the pads, let alone heated up the rotor substantially. Fingers crossed. Classic Coatings are the folks that do the Buell Frames/wheels in nuke blue. I've sent all my stuff to them, and each time, their masking job has SUCKED. I need to find another nuke blue powdercoat source. | ||
| Blake |
"The shear webs that I put the holes in are over 1/2" thick, and the perimeter is over .8" thick. Seriously beefy. The bolt holes that hold the caliper are very close to the edges of the casting. If forces aren't high enough to cause the mounting bolts to rip out of the casting, they certainly aren't high enough to cause any structural failure related to the holes that I've put in the shear webs. Some things for the paranoid to ponder: What are the design loads acting on the carrier? Why is the carrier so beefy and why is it's web so darn thick? What is the allowable shear stress for the cast aluminum alloy? How does this compare to the allowable tension, compression, and bearing stresses? What % stress increase results from a series of holes cut into a shear web? Could the stiffness of the carrier also be important? If the carrier at it's bolted connections is 0.8" thick, can the bolt holes be near the edge and still support the full capacity of the bolts? What is the edge distance for those bolt holes (expressed as a ratio wrt bolt diameter)? Is that really an extreme geometry, structurally speaking? Some numbers: GVWR = ~900 LB Front Disk Mean Radius = 6.1" Front Tire Radius (under hard braking) = ~11" Maximum Braking Deceleration = 1.25 g's (estimate) Maximum Braking Force = 1.25*900 LB = 1125 LB Maximum Carrier Shear = 1125 LB * 11" / 6.1" = ~2000 LB It's just a proof test. It could save your life. Yeah, and a good excuse to have some fun (like you need an excuse).  Blake (way too serious lately) | ||
| Buelliedan |
Blake, Could you speak in English please!! This dumb Army guy doesn't understand a word you just said. Dan | ||
| Blake |
Dan, I reread it; sorry, can't help you. Must have been speaking in tongues. I'll try to find a web site that can splain it. Blake | ||
| Blake |
Dan: I hope you appreciate this, it took me a while to find it. Good stuff though. Shear Analysis of Beams | ||
| Bomber |
Blake my brain hurts! but, as a fairly experienced amatuer (the root of that word means "love" in english, and I love doin this stuff) engineer/fabrication guy, I gotta side with you on this one, even without the mind numbing numbers (always admired folks that could balance their checkbooks in octal). I can think of few areas of the scoot that are subjected to fgreater stresses, and, geez, this is cast aluminum we're talkin about . . . .although it looks trick as hell, Al, I'm thinkin you could have shaved more wieght of other areas of the scoot. winter's coming to Chicago soon . . . is it time to start a new thread on weight reduction (on the BIKES, not the rides . . . . . . ;-} ) | ||
| Al_Lighton |
I ran some real quick numbers on the carrier with the holes using Blake's guesstimates for input load. I looked at the geometry, and figure that I can model the carrier as a cantilever beam. The worst case assumption seems to be that the third hole from the bottom (the biggest, ~.6" diameter) has reduced the area of that beam right at the region where the carrier is not connected to the fork end (i.e right behind the slider tube junction to the casting). I calculated the moment of inertia of that beam with and without the hole right thru the hole center where max material is removed, and came up with I= .4309In^4 without the hole, I = .4219In^4 with the hole, which is a mere 3% reduction. This is to be expected, because the holes were purposely drilled approximately on the neutral axis of the "beam". I made the simplified assumption that the 2000 lb force Blake calculated was applied normal to the top caliper mounting bolt, which should be a far worse condition than what really occurs. The MC/I bending stress at that largest hole is 18960 PSI with the hole, 18564 PSI without the hole. That would be a high number for cast aluminum, but remember this simplified load assumption is probably rediculously conservative. Since we know the stockers don't fail, there is no reason to believe one with 3% higher stress would either. Now I kow this isn't a rigorous structural calculation. Fact is, the caliper is mounted to the inside of the carrier (i.e. closer to the wheel), which puts the carrier in torsion as well as bending. The "shear web" has to react that torsion, and the holes certainly detract from that. But I looked at the carrier on the Showa on my S3, and it is reduced in thickness from both the front and back of the "beam". I think I've got more section in my drilled WP than the showa has stock. So I'm really not too worried about this. But, I think I'll take Blakes advice and go do a bunch of really hard braking stops. I've actually never done a stoppie before (on purpose, anyway), so this will give me a good excuse to find a deserted road to practice a little on. I think I'll bring the print out of the post for the LEOs sake.... And it DOES look very trick..... Al | ||
| Seeeu911 |
Tires..anyone here running the New Dunlop 207 RR, a sport radial (RR=Race Replica) for street ? | ||
| Blake |
Al: Since you drilled holes in the web, you might want to check the shear stress (tyz), you know, where Vy is the shear load, Qx is the first moment of area (Qx=SAxyy), Ix is the moment of inertia, and "t" is the thickness of the web at a point on or closest to the neutral axis. I don't see a significant torsional load in the carrier; the pads clamping on the disk provide fairly rigid constraint against that degree of freedom. To reduce your conservatism a bit, you should be able to resolve the total braking load (2,000 LB) into orthogonal components of transverse shear and axial tension loads. As a rough estimate I'd say the load-line is around 45o to the axis of the carrier, so the applied transverse shear (Vy) and axial tension (Pz) loads would each be roughly Vy=Pz=0.707*2,000=1,414 LB. Thus reducing your bending stress by ~29% before adding the direct tensile stress (sz=Pz/A). I agree with your assumption that the entire applied load acts at the endmost attachment point of the carrier. I'd run the rough shear numbers, but I don't know the geometry. You'll want to check it at max shear stress locations and at the max moment location (each end of what is effectively a cantelevered I-beam with holes in it's web.) Part (c) of this example ought to get you through the rough calculation. It's rough since the carrier is actually a more complex problem due to it's taper and would require calculation of individual shear flows along each edge of the web. But simplifying as we have will be conservative in this case, since some of the shear is carried by truss action loads in the webs and stiffener. Enjoy! Fun stuff; hadn't thought about stress analysis in a while. How did the stoppies go?  Blake (exstressweenie) | ||
| Al_Lighton |
Blake, No stoppies, but as close as you can get to them without the back coming up. I'm just too wimpy to lift the rear. No issues so far after a couple dozen rapid stops, all is well. I'm learning a new solid modeling CAD system. I think I'll model up the entire part, with and without the holes, and throw it into Mechanica and see what it says. All that tapered geometry makes for difficult hand calcs. Al | ||
| Oz666 |
Hi, I rolled my `98 S3T out the garage Wednesday and while waiting for the rocker covers to become body temperature (at least), I noticed that the centre of my rear tire WAS NO LONGER COMPLETELY BLACK!!!!! :{O I bought the bike used with ~3500 miles, now has 8700+ Not bad, as my local Buell dealer sez folks are getting about 3K miles on the rear (tire). Located new 205 170/60, removed wheel, had new rubber hung and balanced. When I was reassembling, I noticed the picture/decripition of the rear caliper in my Buell service manual did not match my unit (it shows TWO allen head attachment screws for both `97 and `98 models). Mine has ONE 12mm hex head attachment screw and one 14mm hex head alignment pin. The caliper housing is black with "Buell" in the casting. The 12mm did not feel happy when torqued to 25 lb.-ft. Is this correct? Also, I experence a "vibration" under moderate to hard braking at speeds abuve 30 mph that I had attributed to the slots cut in the rotor. It doesn't seem to impair braking (GOD, they are GREAT). The huge stopping power/low lever effort was a big selling point as I had my right hand crushed in a tractor trailer OH door some years ago, and it doesn't squeeze as well as my left. My Buell (with which I will NEVER part), has already kept me from doing an impression of a trunk key (@#$%^%$# jerk in Astro van, cut me off, anchored up, NO BRAKE LIGHTS, me->van @ 50mph). Do I need the 2K rotor & carrier? Two hours of reading the archives answered my question about wider rear rubber. This is my first Buell & HD product - what a perfect bike. (HD guys don't know what they are missing). It's taking a little getting used to - valve train noise STILL freaks me out... Blake - some people DO understand (and are interested in) all those little squiggles you draw. I just try not to think about them when coming out of a corner, leaned way over, headed for redline in third. Oz |
