Life’s never straight forward, just like Bruce’s project bike.
You’ve got to bloody love technology! And Lee Kempson, of L74 Track & Race Products (www.l74.co.uk) too. He came to my rescue with the Suzuki yokes quandary by tackling the job of producing the bespoke items needed to narrow the width of the fork legs. To get that ball rolling it was a simple case of taking measurements of the width, the thickness and the recesses needed for the Moto3 bike’s new yokes.
Armed with that info, Lee, who’s not just a handy bike racer but also an exceptional engineer, created a CAD design of the yokes and then set about 3D printing them.
Maybe the canny eyed among you saw a few pictures of the printing process on our Facebook site, to which there were a few questions as to why we’d bothered to print them and not just machine them out of billet alloy. Well, the answer is simple; if we cocked up, it meant we hadn’t spunked out a load of cash on CNC machining. Plus, it meant we could get our filthy mits on the parts practically overnight. And that’s pretty much how things panned out.
Lee cracked on and got us the solid-state plastic yokes within 48 hours of dropping him a line, which was nothing short of exceptional. What was less impressive was our ingenuity. I should clarify here that when I say ‘our’ I mean ‘my’, because I messed up a few calculations, as Clive pointed out when fitting the fancy bits of plastic.
Full circle
Denne historien er fra September 2017-utgaven av Fast Bikes.
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Denne historien er fra September 2017-utgaven av Fast Bikes.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
Steve Parrish
It's been a busy old month but so good being back in the thick of it. Despite the great British weather, it finally feels like summer is here, and I've been all over the place with some really great events since we spoke last month.
Christian Iddon
It's a long time since I had that feeling... 1057 days, to be precise, and if you were to ask if 'that day' was the day it would happen again, then I would have bet all my worldly belongings against it.
BOTH A CRIMINAL AND CIVIL CASE
There’s a time and place to lawyer up to the hills, and this is one them...
LONGTERMER KAWASAKI ZX-6R
Last month, I was gearing up to consign my ZX-6R to the back of my garage while I disappeared for the best part of three weeks to work at the TT with Batham's Racing.
YAMAHA WABASH RT
When you live a life of wheelies, burnouts and fast laps on race tracks, it's hard to spot a midlife crisis... but six months on in the saddle of Yamaha's Wabash e-bike, I daresay that's exactly where I'm at. I'll be honest, cycling isn't for everyone, and quite frankly, Lycra is even more polarising, but for me, life on two wheels, be it powered or pedalled, has formed my staple diet for as long as I can remember.
24 HOURS FLAT-OUT!
Ever fancied a crack at 24-hour endurance racing? You might think again after reading this...
PROJECT 37 A TEST OF TIME
Having got his head around the standard bike at Cadwell, Timmy heads to Powerslide Motorcycles with a wish list of improvements for the Suzuki GSX-8R...
'WHY WE GO RACING...5
Ever wondered why big brands spend big money and put in huge amounts of effort to go racing? Well, we did too, so we didn’t hesitate to ask the man who makes that call for Honda Racing UK...
9 BIKES WE WISH WERE STILL HERE...
No one’s worked out how to bring things back from the dead, but if we had our way, these are the bikes we’d oe see makingareturn.
SENSATIONAL SUZUKI LIVE
Blending decades of motorcycles, racing legends, track time and a beer tent with a cracking band, Suzuki Live’s formula proved a winner for the thousands there.
