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gs450 brake upgrade - salty monk style

  • Thread starter Thread starter bwanna
  • Start date Start date
B

bwanna

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Everyone is probably already familiar with salty monk's brake upgrade from the single piston to the twin piston caliper. With his help I was able to do this for my '82 GS450

Some things unique to this are:
1. The hub spacer is not needed.
2. ONLY the twin piston calipers will fit. Don't make my mistake and buy the 4 poison caliper... it will extend to far and make contact with the tire spokes.
3. While the original brake line works fine, a 45 degree adapter on the caliper end would give a little more room to the bleeder valve.

This upgrade sites appear on original tests to give good song... not sure if it's better, but it is different. Somewhat smoother maybe.

Here are a few pictures of the final upgrade. Let me know if you need more and I'll take some.
 
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Thanks for the info. I'm planning to do this upgrade on my '81. Do you have any pics?
 
Glad to hear it!

I did some measuring with Dan a while back and it looked like it would work, so good to see you got it done.

Looking forward to some pic's and more reports on how the improvements are.
 
Dan mentioned that no one had tried this yet for the 450, so I'm glad to oblige. I was surprised about not needing the hub spacer. It seems just the offset triangular piece is the key.

Please let me know if there's any additional information that's needed to help others do this!



pete said:
Glad to hear it!

I did some measuring with Dan a while back and it looked like it would work, so good to see you got it done.

Looking forward to some pic's and more reports on how the improvements are.
Click to expand...
 
Are you sure the rotor is centralised within the caliper without the spacer? Just humour me and double check as if the rotor is too far away from the pistons there is a chance that the pistons could reach the end of their travel and drop out of the caliper when pad is low with pretty catastrophic results.... :)

Is the offset of the CBR rotor the same as stock 450? Are 450 rotors unique to that model?
 
salty_monk said:
Are you sure the rotor is centralised within the caliper without the spacer? Just humour me and double check as if the rotor is too far away from the pistons there is a chance that the pistons could reach the end of their travel and drop out of the caliper when pad is low with pretty catastrophic results.... :)

Is the offset of the CBR rotor the same as stock 450? Are 450 rotors unique to that model?
Click to expand...

Here's a closeup of the piston/pad area... there seems to be enough piston left. What do you think?
 
bwanna said:
Here's a closeup of the piston/pad area... there seems to be enough piston left. What do you think?
Click to expand...


Here's another picture.


UPDATE: Salty was correct. Coming to a stop on my driveway, the outside brake pad pushed out beyond its retaining clips and fell out. The fix is simply enough. I added washers between the fork brace and the caliper to move the caliper closer to the wheel - being very careful to ensure it doesn't touch the wheel.

Next I added a thinner spacer between the rotor and the hub to move it closer to the outside brake pad.

This combination worked very well and the rotor now appears to ride very close to the outside pad when it's in the full seated position.

If you do this upgrade, make sure you pay close attention at the spacing between the outside of the rotor and the outside brake pad. The only pad that really should move alot is the inside brake pad.
 
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I would take the washers out and use the rotor spacer... That's what it is for!
When using it you need to cut down your speedo drive dust shield by about 4-5mm as otherwise it will bind up the wheel when you tighten the axle bolt.
There are pictures of this in the thread.

I don't know what washers / spacers you used but I don't see it as being such a good solution. You told me that you used 3-4mm of washers on the caliper and 1mm on the rotor. That is 4-5mm of movement when you add it up which funnily enough is the same thickness as the rotor spacer ;) :D
 
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