Spoke wheels for your XJ

I don't know if this was covered on the forums but I think this would be helpful in getting the spoke wheels on our XJs.
http://www.yamaha-triples.org/forums/th ... ightmode=1

 

That will work on the XJ1100 Maxim only.
Not the 650-750-900 size.

 

for those who want spoked wheels on all the xj range.. look at a yamaha virago... thats what I did.. and they fit like a dream.

 

why would you want spoke wheels.

i'm wishing my bike had mags instead of spokes.

 

The grass is always greener

 

i don't see any advantage to having spoke wheels.
flat tires can't be fixed easily. and the added cost of having tubes and rubber rim rings to keep the tubes from poking on the spokes.

over on the suzuki thread. people are taking the spoke wheels and converting them to tubeless. or junking the spokes in place of mags.


the greener grass is mags. not spokes. if i get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. i have to be towed home. if a mag gets flat. i have a repair kit and pump to get them back on the road again.

 

If I get a flat tyre on my spoked wheel in the middle of nowhere I have a repair kit, a spare tube and a pump to get me back on the road again

I like spoked wheels mainly for a looks thing but in a lot of cases they are also lighter

 

One of the big drawbacks to a tube type tire is if you get a puncture it goes flat right now. Tubless tires usually leak down slower, especially if the offending item stays embedded in the tire.

I had a customer with a 3" deck screw completely driven into his tubeless tire. It wasn't even leaking.

 

I prefer the look of a spoked rim, and since I'm building a Cafe Racer.

 

The spokes shine up nice !!

 

what about the jack you need to lift the bike off the ground. and those tools to pull the tire off the bike.

i've got 12 sockets and usb ports on my bike. anyone needs car electricity i've got it. with a tubeless tire i've got plugs and a electric pump. no need to pull the tire off. and there were about 4 flats on all the rides i did last year. even myself needed some air in the middle of nowhere.

 

I can see one benifit right away, spoked wheels mean spoked hubs. The choice of rim size is is much more abundant and many of us would like wider rims to go with our wider tires. The second is practical, if we join the rest of the world and go to 17's then we have a much wider selection of tires, (and prices also) I'd rather have tubeless but have paused to think about swapping to 5x16 & 3.5x17 rather than 2.15x18 & 1.85x19 wheels for 140 mm width rear and 110mm width front tires. You can put those width tires on the stock wheels but they look kinda balloonish, (shades of the 60's & schwinn stingray styling) Lol.
Anyway, I ride mine almost everyday, weather permitting, and really don't like the idea of a sudden blowout at freway/turnpike speeds. but I think it would look cooler, especially with short shocks in back. Thats my 2cents.

 

Evolution, gentlemen, plain and simple.

In most cases, the cast wheels are lighter than wire wheels; cast wheels are inherently stiffer; they're maintenance-free (spokes come loose and need to be attended to properly to keep from pulling the wheel out of true) and most importantly for the manufacturers, they're WAY cheaper to manufacture than spoked wheels.

Personally, I like the appearance of both, depending on the application; and I'd love to fit a set of spoked wheels to one of my 550 Secas. But it would actually be a step backward, technology-wise.

De - evolution.

 

More evidence: Take a look at this bike.

It was certainly NOT built for looks, it was built for function, pure and simple. It has a cast wheel on the front because it's lighter and stiffer than the original wire spoked wheel that came on the bike. Very popular dirt tracker mod. The rear gets left as-is because there's no real advantage in a swap there. (There's no front brake because this is a real flat-tracker, not a street bike.)

 

Which quite often allows you to ride with the tyre low and pressure and wreck it anyway

Do they not have centre stands where you come from :lol:

Only need two tyre levers and a crescent for the rest

Perhaps if you're talking modern cast wheels but looking (and weighing) spoked and cast wheels from the XJ era I would say not

Spoked wheels also don't need much checking for on road use

 

I love my center stand, enough to avoid pipes that would interfere with it.

 

I consider them ruined when they get a puncture, tube or tubeless.

What I meant is a tubeless tire is much less likely to suddenly deflate and result in a loss of control.

 

i've been looking at picking up some harley spoke wheels.. front are dual disk..so i don't know if they'll fit exactly on my 400.. might just have to take one off... and rear is belt drive and disk (mine is drum) so i gotta figure out a sprocket and how to mount a brake caliper to the frame..

just wondering do i need the harley brake caliper and brake pedal assembly or does it matter if i get a different one? any xj's run a rear disk?
should my front caliper work with any disk brake?

 

You could use a sprotor brake, just need to add a MC and line.

 

for real... awesome... i'll look into it...

 

They do if the bike has any sort of real power. Rear spokes on my Norton regularly turn up loose; I had a buddy back in the day whose H2 almost completely unlaced its rear wheel due to all the extended wheelies.

And those bikes came with wire wheels.

I imagine that fitted to an XJ, they would require some rather regular attention. There's a bit of a power curve difference between an XS or a Virago and an XJ.

We've also got to be careful about extreme weight differences between the "donor" bike and the bike the wheels are going on; I've been having second thoughts about an XT/TT500-to-550 Seca rear swap for just that reason. I'm concerned that (nearly) all of the donor bikes being discussed are "lighter" in both weight and performance than the XJs.

I guess it all depends on the intended end-use for the bike. If it's going to be an occasional-rider/cafe hopper, then OK I guess; but as a serious mount racking up real miles, I'm concerned about reliability and therefore safety, long-term.

 

i'm curious as to what attention the mag rims require?

there's nothing on there to come loose. other then the valve stem.

 

That's something I have also thought about with weight being more of a consideration than power as I reckon a 4 cylinder will be easier on them due to a smoother power deliver than a single or a twin

 

None, that's the point. Wire wheels DO require regular attention.

 

Hey, sometimes you feel like a spoke.....some times you don't.


:wink:

 

What do you consider regular?

 

I give the rear on my Nort the "musical test" every couple thousand miles or so; maybe every third or fourth chain-lubing session.

I spin the wheel, and drag a screwdriver along the spokes as it spins; ting-ting-ting-ting-CLUNK-ting-ting... and then attend to the "clunkers."

I check the rear for "trueness" (out-of-round and lateral runout) after any spoke-tightening; and the front whenever I think of it.

I was thinking about what you said about power delivery of a four vs. a twin, but it raised a question: why do our XJs have a cush-drive system built into the rear hub that the XT/TT and XS rear hubs do not? Do those bikes have a cushioning system elsewhere in the drivetrain, like the old Triumphs had in the center of the clutch hub? I don't see one in the fiche...

Or is the flex inherent in a wire wheel enough? My Norton has a cush-drive in its rear hub too, why don't the XS's?

 

There's an additional "cush" mechanism in the final output shaft (just before the middle gears) that seems to have a spring loaded 1/4 turn.

I noticed this on one of my "burn" engines that is locked up.

 

I always assumed it was because given that they were offroad bikes there would be slippage on loose surfaces so the cush drive wouldn't be as important

The later larger dual purpose/offroad bikes have cush drives in the rear hub

 

Good assumption, but how does that explain the XS650 street bike?

 

No idea, doesn't it have one?

 

Not that I can find. It does have a circle of compression springs built into the clutch basket, like an automotive clutch plate, but that's it and I would think that's more for the clutch than cushioning the final drive.

Nothing in the final drive or rear wheel.

Fascinating. Now I'm going to do some more research: weight and HP of the bikes we've talked about to get a power-to-weight ratio. Maybe compare peak torque and gearing as well.

 

Q - is this cushioning needed for smooth shifting, or so the individual engine impulses aren't transmitted as vibration??