Mocking up Bracketsi

The bike is now totally stripped in order to refinish it for the final time.  Part of this process is machining and fabricating the final brackets for some of the component parts.  With older bikes, the improvement in braking capabilities compared to modern-day machines is huge.  New calipers, new pad compounds, piston design, etc, have led to much safer and controllable machines.  To that end, Mr. Sheppard rooted through his box o' parts at home and dug out a spare Nissin caliper, actually from a Honda RC51 superbike.  That machine runs two front calipers, but considering it's capable of the far side of 150mph, not a bad idea.  One caliper should be sufficient for us.

Step one was mocking up a rough template in wood.  Using some scraps from the TCS woodworking facility, an hour and a half of measuring, drilling, cutting and sanding (and 3 attempts) netted us this result.  A start, and a rough guide for the machinists to build upon.

Modern four-piston calipers do tend to be "deeper" in that there are active pistons on both sides of the caliper.  There are sometimes clearance issues between the wider caliper and the narrow spokes of a vintage wheel.  Some material from the backside can be removed, but you need to be very careful... of course the whole assembly is under considerable pressure!  As well, the "old" front brake rotor is nearly twice as thick as the modern equivalent.  The rough mockup shows that things should work, but there will no doubt be some more tweaking as this sub-project continues.