Newbie from the East Midlands checking in and doing the do...

[Honda Brat]

Hey to you all, my name's Mark and i'm from Leicester.  This is my 3rd bike build in the past 3 years.  The last two builds have been a 92 Royal Enfield 500 chopper and last year I finished a 9ft Harley Sporty 1200.  I picked up a basket case Cb500/4 from one of the members 2 weeks ago and already  started to make progress on her.  She will be a brat style bike (I know I know to the purists) but when I got her she already had the rear frame rails chopped and to be honest not much came with the project so it lends itself to a brat style bike.

I scoured the site for a while and in the past when I was trying to get me hands on a 750 but that fell through    Hope to meet some good folk on here and pick your brains as all mine have feel out 

cheers for now

(ps...didn't realise that there was a UK SOHC owners club) so the introduction is copied from the US one  )

[SteveD CB500K0]

We are (mostly) the same people.

We talk English here and stay away from guns and politics!

Steve

[UK Pete]

Hi Mark welcome to the site
Pete

[Honda Brat]

not sure what it is over on the US forum but itseems all the noobs get passed by when asking questions?  I guess it could be to do with the time difference and the amount of posts, but hey, who knows??

[Honda Brat]

ooo forgot to mention, Steve did you get my PM on the other forum?

[SteveD CB500K0]

Hi Marek.

Yes I did get your message and was about to post the following answer: 

The .net site is probably your best bet for advice on fitting modern front ends to a 500/4 (as there are 10k+ members there and more likely that someone has already tried it). I suggest you start a thread in the "Project" forum and make sure you put the words "modern front end on 500/4" or similar to attract the guys that may have done this.

Do the same here but in the CB500 forum.

The stock answer would be that you can fit anything to anything with the right tools and equipment. If you are happy working with castor angles and stuff like that, I'd say give it a go.

Some of the 400 guys here may have advice too (TTR400 in South Africa for example)

Good luck and post lots of pictures!

Steve

[Honda Brat]

cheers Steve, long story short I guess is - i'm OK with fab work, did a Royal Enfield Chopper/bobber that got some media time a couple of years ago and a 9ft Harley Sporty (current bike) - so I like to have a challenge, the thing that crossed my mind was to get the lower legs of my 500/4 and shave them down on a lathe and tig new brackets for modern calipers?  Then I was told it would be sacrilege to do so, so I got my hands on a set of forks yesterday from another forum member I know, they are 35mm which will fit into the standard yokes but are a couple of inches longer, still need to ID them but for a tenner I can't grumble 

[matthewmosse]

400 twin forks and yokes I think slotted stright in using standard bearings and leaves a wider range of modern calipers. I'd geuss the same might be true of 650 then you get into the territory of swap stems over on yokes or slab yokes etc.