lcrken
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- Joined
- Mar 15, 2009
- Messages
- 4,967
I was rummaging through my accumulation of Commando engine cradles yesterday, looking for a replacement for the 750 I'm rebuilding, and ran accross several that had been reinforced for road racing. I'm showing them here just to show the variety of techniques folks used in the '70s and '80s. They all included welded on nuts with bolts to lock down the swingarm pivot shaft. The first set of pictures shows them in a row, with a stock cradle at the right hand end.
To show a little more detail of them, I'm including a couple shots of the second from the left cradle above. It's interesting in that it has reinforcing bars on both the left and right side engine mounting lugs. I've only seen the one on the right side break, so that's all I ever reinforced on my bikes. This one is also the only one I've seen with an added cross tube at the bottom. Plus, it has a partial needle bearing swingarm conversion, where the stock bronze bush i left in place, but shortened, and a needle bearing pressed in next to it. That's not shown in the pictures, but I thought it was an interesting approach. It's the cradle that was in Fred Eiker's racing Commando, for those that know Fred.
Ken
To show a little more detail of them, I'm including a couple shots of the second from the left cradle above. It's interesting in that it has reinforcing bars on both the left and right side engine mounting lugs. I've only seen the one on the right side break, so that's all I ever reinforced on my bikes. This one is also the only one I've seen with an added cross tube at the bottom. Plus, it has a partial needle bearing swingarm conversion, where the stock bronze bush i left in place, but shortened, and a needle bearing pressed in next to it. That's not shown in the pictures, but I thought it was an interesting approach. It's the cradle that was in Fred Eiker's racing Commando, for those that know Fred.
Ken