Thursday, April 2, 2009

Rear Brake Bracket

Mulitple views of the rear brake bracket I made. Looks like a complicated piece. I spent a lot of time laying it out such that it would wrap the frame as much as possible and be somewhat hidden underneath the right rear frame point. The radius angle matches the same angle as the right rear frame tube that comes off the axle block. The offest required to get the caliper centered over the brake rotor is built into the brake bracket.
Slight adjustments that need to made will be accomplished with stainless steel brake calipers shims. Completely common when dealing with one off parts and paint stackups.

I will machine a brake tab out of stainless that will use the front most brake caliper bolt for a sanitary design. I will later weld it to the frame. I am using stainless so that I can grind the powdercoat off it and then be able to slide the caliper fore and aft with the rear wheel for chain adjustment. It just looks like shit when you see rings in the paint or powdercoat from the brake bracket being slid around.


I machined this on a 2-D CNC Bridgeport. I designed it such that I could use common ball mills, end mill and bull nose end mills, but making it function as a 3-D sculpted part when it fits in the bike. Spending 8 hours to design this bracket and 4 hours to machine it are worth it too me. NO ONE ELSE in the entire world has this same bracket to mount a sport bike caliper on their chopper. That's good enough for me.




Front Brake Bracket

I don't know that these pictures do the front brakes justice. Or maybe they do. H-D lower fork legs, Tokico Brake Calipers off a Suzuki GSX-R 750 Crotch Rocket and the brake bracket that I designed and machined to bolt it all together. I will post some Solidworks images of the bracket to help show the bosses and 'furniture foot' reliefs that I machined around the edges of it. The Socket head bolts are strictly for mock up. I am going to run hex dimple flange head bolts that are used on Moto GP bikes. Pro-Bolt of out of England is the place for these bad ass bolts.
I chose the Tokico calipers becuase they are proven, race quality piece. No worries about function or finding replacement pads down the road. The are cheap too. Fabricator Kevin hooked me up with these. He makes some pretty slick, shaped steel brackets, but the machined aluminum ones will match better with all of the parts that I am going to make.

11.5" dia Performance Machine brake rotors front and back. Blanchard ground 410 stainless outers, 6061 Aluminum centers.