Re: 1973 ironhead 1000. "the dark side" dead tail
Got a little turkey day garage time in tonight. I wanna build a springer front end for the bike, but some of ya'lls "voice of reason" has maybe been getting through a bit. Either way, I was looking and measuring and thinking. I procured a 71 (i think) cb350 front wheel recently (thanks cory) I like the mechanical look of the outside levers on the dual leading shoe front drum. I thought maybe i could make it work with the stock hardly forks.
Not quite, they are just a bit to narrow at the axle clamps to fit the stock axle from the cb350 hub, so i started taking apart the fork tubes. Thats oil on the celing of my garage from taking tubes apart and sqeezing the last bit of oil outta the tubes haha
I couldnt get the dang bolt out of the bottom, as it just kept spinning the slider inside, i ended up having to ratchet strap the dang fork leg to get enough force on the spring to hold it tight from spinning when trying to loosen it up, but got er eventually
I had the cb550 front end on the bike (kinda) and realised that they both have 35mm fork tubes. The things that make you go hmm. So, looking at the lowers on the 550, i realized that there was an offset that may be enough to clear the stock 350 axle. I decided to try to put the 550 lowers on the harley tubes. After taking them apart, they were eerily similar inside. Harley tube on top, cb tube on bottom
With them assebled, there is about a 1/8" gap on each side. Nothing i cant remedy with some time on the old south bend
Got the front end back on. I like how this makes many things much more simple. I am planning on lacing up the rear rim to the front hub. They are both 18", but the rear rim is wider by about 3/4". I will internally lower the front end a little bit more, but this option would keep me from having to machine new triples and also allow me to run a front drum. Nothing like a true Honda/Harley bastard compilation =)