Repositioning of front forks

Has anybody got any views on my below question please? Bike 1974 Commando,and has a couple of parts not usually associated with the commando , eg Alu wheels.

I have purchased a RGM larger disc and have swapped the front forks around (O/S to Nearside , and Nearside to O/S,)bike registered in Scotland/GB).

The Nearside (left hand side looking from pilots veiw) before removal has the front calliper situated to the front of the fork(slider) ,and is now at the rear , now positioned on the right .
So......what problems would/could I encounter when bike is ready for the road???????

As I have mentioned at the start it is fitted with Alu wheels ( Eric Offenstadte /SMAC,) which i am sure has been ‘discussed’ about before on this site). This bike will be known as a RRR....a rolling road restoration, to be used on the road,not sat in a garage to be polished.
Tyres have also been moved to correct rotation.

Many thanks in advance.

Hogslayerscot said:

The Nearside (left hand side looking from pilots veiw) before removal has the front calliper situated to the front of the fork(slider) ,and is now at the rear , now positioned on the right .
So......what problems would/could I encounter when bike is ready for the road???????

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It's possible you might notice the bike now has a tendency to drift/steer to the left, 'hands-off' with the brake on the original RH side. And then again...you might not.

Turning the forks around to have the calipers at the rear of the forks was a popular mod with 70s bikes. The idea was that it put the mass of the calipers closer to the steering axis and reduced “ steering inertia”.
Whether it has any real benefit is arguable. It does put the calipers out of the airstream and may have a minor detrimental effect on cooling but moto gp bike seem to do ok like that.

As LAB said, since your bike is a 74, the caliber was originally on the right, it was a common mod to swap it around to the left side like the factory did on the ‘75 MkIII Commandos. Not a problem, all ‘72-74 Commandos came with them on the right.

My question is: For what purpose to go to all that trouble?
True Norton engineers did some stupid things, but all in all
they knew what they were doing given the crappy machine
tools they had to work with.

As LAB mentioned, with the original set up, the bikes had a tendency to drift to the left, switching the disk to the left side can neutralize this phenomenon. If you don’t ride around with your hands of the bars you may never notice it.

B

Changing the caliper to the left and thus fitting the front wheel the other way round involves a risk that the wheel bearing retainer comes loose.
I believe there is a Norton service bulletin mentioning this possiblity.

Take a small punch and stake the retaining ring in a couple spots around the edge, it won’t go anywhere.

B

He's moved it FROM left TO right, so it may be that the hub is the later type with the circlip rather than the lockring?

Or, if it is the older type of hub with the lockring, it's now on the correct side, so won't come loose anyway.

My caliper has always been on the right, hands off it did drift to the left but now racks true, trouble is I did 3 changes on the same day so no idea which of them fixed the drift and now cannot remember what all three changes were but 2 were new rear tyre and checking and adjusting the wheel alignment.

Thank you for all the comments,I will have a closer look at the Alu SMAC 19” wheel bearings as wheel/ hub is all cast as one. Thank you all.

kommando said:

My caliper has always been on the right, hands off it did drift to the left but now racks true, trouble is I did 3 changes on the same day so no idea which of them fixed the drift and now cannot remember what all three changes were but 2 were new rear tyre and checking and adjusting the wheel alignment.

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Was the third one adjusting wheel offset?

Steves said:

Was the third one adjusting wheel offset?

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No, neither was it adding clamps to the swingarm as I did that later.