Copyright WWW.DBBP.COM | updated 2-January-2006

Shortening a Springer

 

 

The rear leg of a classic Springer fork is made of oval tapered tubes. I love oval tapered tubes but this makes it a bit more difficult to shorten. We started by removing the brake tab because I plan to mount my front brake on the other side. We beltsanded the welds away untill we almost touched the forklegs, then with an old screwdriver broke off the braketab. The last bits of the welds were removed with a file and sandpaper to avoid grinding into the legs.


 
 

After discussing with Fred (Krugger) we decided to use a hydraulic press to flatten the ends of the legs further. They are amazingly strong by the way, we used a 50 ton press and that had a hard time flattening the tube completely, we ended up flattening about a quarter inch at a time. After we had made the original flat part about 2 inches longer we cut off the original ends of the legs ( 47 mm) and reshaped the flattened ends to look like the original ends. Both legs are now 47millimeters shorter and after I have cleaned up the remains of the stock fendermounts I will assemble the forks in bare metal for mockup.


 
 
 
 
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