So back in April of last year when I went out to New Mexico to pick this bike up from good sir canyoncarver, I realized about 200 miles from there that I'd left the front wheel in his shop. I knew I wouldn't be ready for it for a while, so I set out on some research about front wheel swaps. The original front wheel on the RV125 is a 14" tire which is only available from Bridgestone for $200. To hell with that! After a bit of digging, I found a few people who had actually swapped another rear rim onto the front, as it bolts directly on to the front hub and only requires the use of an aluminum spacer to get the wheel centered.
After a few cancelled orders I was able to find a good shape rear wheel and hub for around $60 shipped. I couldn't believe the price since the thing damn near weighs 30 lbs with the tire on it. Once it got here I set out to work.
I soon found out, that this particular bike was the first production year which has a slide-through front axle rather than one that bolts up from the bottom. The design was changed in '74 after the first year of production. The front hub on this bike has a completely different offset than the later hubs and forks, so the swap would not be as easy as I originally thought.
Bolted everything up and the wheel was offset 10mm to the right (looking forward), so I drew out a plan to get everything centered. Initial bolt up pic:
After some brainstorming, I figured the only way to make this work was to remove 5mm from the fork lower where the brake panel bolts up (the left side pictured here was originally 10mm wider than the opposite side, so I was not concerned with compromising the strength by removing 5mm). That got me closer to centered, but I'd need another 5mm to get there.
After talking with hurco, we decided it would be doable to stick the hub in the lathe and skim 5mm off the mounting surfaces where the hub bolts onto the wheel itself. The master at work:
With removing 5mm from the mounting surface on the hub, I was actually a bit concerned with the structural ability of the hub. I decided to draw up a spacer and have my uncle waterjet it out of some ~5mm aluminum. When everything is bolted together, the spacer will pick up some of the load from the hub.
After all that, the only thing left was to get everything tight back in between the forks. Mr. E was kind enough to whip up an aluminum axle spacer for the right side for the final piece of the puzzle, which you can see here placed outside of the original spacer/dust cover.
Here you can see the brake side bolted up, the fork lower now looks identical to the opposite side.
Whew. Looking back now that swap was WAY more work than I thought. But with a bit of planning and some helpful friends with lathes, everything lines up right and now I have a few more options as far as tires go.