"Dog operating camera" HAH! I thought the same thing when reviewing the pics. Or, "where is that kid of mine? This is why we HAD her"!
The results are everything I'd hoped for. Steering as light as the raked trees, but everything is stiffer. Tracks straight. The brakes just work. With the originals, each stop caused little warning bells to ring, "remember to brake WAY early". Now, you just brake when you normally would, and the rig comes to a tidy stop.
Well, first off, I started with forks set up for dual discs (81 VX920R in my case). Don't think it is possible otherwise.
The adapters main connections are the original axle holes in the fork legs (different diameters left and right in my case) and the caliper mounting bosses.
The steel plate is flush to the outside of the fork leg at the flat surrounding the axle holes. The new axle hole is forward of the original on mine by 2 inches (don't forget to account for the rake angle as I did). Then spacers are needed to center the wheel. These should exactly match the section thickness of the fork leg where the original axle passed thru. Note left and right on my forks were not identical thickness. I found some steel spacers on
ebay already drilled and tapped for 10mm bolts.
These are cut to the exact length needed to fill the gap between the steel plate and the caliper bosses. Again, left and right were not identical. Not visible: I added a ~ 1 inch wide strip of 1/4" steel under the bottom of the fork leg, extending to the new axle spacer. It is welded to the side plates and the axle spacer, and I had it clamped tight to the bottom of the fork leg when tack welding. This does 2 things: it helps transmit bump shocks to the fork body, instead of the caliper bosses. It also adds stiffness left and right. It has an "L" shape, drilled to match the pinch bolt hole, and an 8mm bolt and nut
Caliper mounting depends on what brake you use. The original calipers would have been a problem because the new mounting location puts the mounts right in the fork leg. The GSXR 4-pot calipers and 12 inch (1983 Virago) discs (the right side slots slant the wrong way because the '83 was single disc only) worked out well.
Lastly, I repositioned the fender forward. I used the rear fender hole in the front fork leg mount, and fabbed little brackets to go from the rear fork leg mounts to newly-drilled holes in the fender 'strut' area. I used the front fender hole, now out in front of the forks, to mount sawed-off brake line brackets.
Whew. It took a week of nights in my shop, plus a 3-day weekend to fab and assemble. I have a harbor freight benchtop table saw with a 10-inch cutoff wheel. Cutting the 1/4 steel made such an intense stream of grinder flash, it melted a hole in the plastic saw housing, and started it on fire (mere inches from my crotch!). Measure carefully, because it's something you only want to do it once.
Oh, yes... and the exhaust wrap: 90% of the tug was assembled out of spare parts from another project. Including the relocated front exhaust header. The wrap is simply to hide the fact that it was cobbled together from random scraps of exhaust tubing.
