Brembos

I have an op to buy and endeavour to fit a four spot Brembos (84mm mount to mount hole) OR even a two spot (40 mm) ~

Does anyone know the odds of this working ~ easily ~ painlessly .. or worth the effort?

It should work great and would look very nice too. You'd want to use a Brembo or Magura or Nissin master cylinder with it, not the stock unit. The main complication would be fabricating an adapter plate for fitting the caliper to the fork slider. You need a friend with a machine shop for that task.

I thought about doing that myself but don't have the resources and it's pretty near impossible finding machinists locally who are willing to take on jobs like that. I ended up with the stock caliper and rotor and a Nissin master cylinder from a Honda CBR600F2. I'm very pleased with the results.

I think "nortonfan" fitted a Brembo caliper to one of his bikes. He seems to have dropped out of the forum though

Debby

Check this out. www.qtmi.com/systems/nortonbrakes.htm

QTM makes the kit sold by Colorado Norton Works, and seems to encourage you to buy the kit from Matt. While it's a good looking package, I don't care for the chrome and hesitate at the $1k price. I believe the Brembo caliper will need a thinner disc than the stock Norton. You could buy the one from QTM or CNW and their caliper adapter (the price I was quoted several months ago was not much less than the entire kit), or try to find a disc that could be used with a spacer to adapt the bolt pattern to the wheel and align it with the caliper. This would require a one-off caliper adapter also. One idea presented to me was to thin a stock disc, drill it for the full floater buttons and use the cast iron disc off a late model Ducati. This would require some lathe and mill work, but is an interesting concept.
I have been kicking this idea around myself for awhile, but haven't had the time or funds to get it done. I really like the Brembos on my Ducatis and BMW.

Ron & Stuart

RGM sells a full floating 12" disc with an alloy center. It looks very good and they sell it for +/- $155 US (depends on the current xrate). Shipping will add another $25/30 but if you combine the order with other parts it can be amortized to a reasonable level. I've also looked into trying to adapt a Ducati disc to the Norton since the big advantage would be to drop some unsprung weight, those stock NVT disc's weigh something like 6 or 8 pounds!
Interestingly I did pick up a Nissin caliper thinking it would be a lot lighter than the NVT caliper; surprise surprise I think the Nissin was less than 8 ounces lighter and probably dead even once the adapter was included. The stock calipers look heavier than they really are.

Question to Debby; how is your disc set-up working?

Scooter

Scooter62 said:

Question to Debby; how is your disc set-up working?
Scooter

Click to expand...

Works great! It's a two-finger brake and doesn't have that wooden feel of the stock setup. I think the biggest improvement you can make is to swap out the stock master cylinder.

My setup: Nissin (from a Honda CBR600F2) mc w/ 13 mm bore, stock iron rotor drilled and resurfaced, stock caliper, emgo pads. I'm very pleased with the results.

Debby

I have the AP racing caliper, SS braided brake pipe, Ferrodo pads, stock disc, stock master and a racing lever. Its a 2 finger stop on mine with a chirpping tyre at will so it enough for me.

kommando

Kool You offer some great glimmer of optimism ~

Thanks Debby ABD OTHERS.. But seems a real labour of ?? and facilities and time I don't have !

I did each change individually and all contributed some improvement but the best was the SS braided line, in order of effectiveness I would rank them as follows with the first the best.

SS Braided line
AP Racing Caliper
Racing lever
Ferrodo pads (going for EBC softies next)

everything came from RGM motors

The stock disc has lost all its plating over the years so rusts easily but cleans up in 100 yds, keeping the master cylinder stock keeps the brake light and also the mirror still fits. I did however fit new seals and also went to DOT5 silicon fluid to stop any future leaks destroying the paint on the tank, but in the 15 years since the new seals went in there have been no leaks also no water in the fluid either as it is not hydroscopic.

The original setup was 100% stock and was wooden in feel and in my mind unsafe. The setup now is nearly perfect, in fact if it was any better I would have problems swapping to one of my TLS drum braked BSA's as the difference would be too great.