I just recently finished swapping my front forks out on my 1984 200es with some 200m forks and I thought Id give a little run down of what all I did with some crappy iphone pictures attached. This is not a very difficult job to just swap the two front ends. I added a degree of difficulty because I wanted to keep the es front headlight guard, front rack and fender. So here it is...
First remove the old front end. There is a step by step of how to do this in the manual. (note-the front axle can be a bear to get out)
Next it was time to make a bracket to hold the headlight guard and and front rack. Having a full machine shop and a CNC laser at my disposal really helped with this.All I had to do was take a few measurements off the old forks and away we went. As it turns out, the top of the forks are wider on the M forks than the ES forks so welding a plate to the M forks was the easiest way I could come up with to have somewhere to weld all the brackets needed. Two other brackets had to be welded on to the lower part of the triples for the rack supports and two others had to be made for the fender to bolt on. Here is the bracket...
Lastly the triples were sent to the powder coaters for a coat of flat black. The brake assembly was done in red. (It looks orange ish in the picture for some reason) and the telescopic part of the forks was painted because they had already been rebuilt with new seals and oil and i did not want to take them back apart. While I had it all apart I went ahead and replaced the steering stem bearings, wheel bearings, brake shoes, and all the dust seals. After everything got painted and or powdercoated it was just a matter of reassembling the new front forks and installing them on the bike. Here are the finished results.
http://www.3wheelerworld.com/attachm...8&d=1317396523
A few other notes on this. If you want to use the stock fender, you will have to cut it where the forks meet the fender on the side. With some careful mocking up, some tape to tape off what you dont want to cut, a cutoff wheel and a carbide deburring tool in an air grinder you can make this look nice. Im sure there are better ways to cut plastic but I didnt have one of those ways and mine came out really nice. The things you have to have to do this conversion are the complete set of triples, including the triple clamp,axle,and brake hub assembly from and 84-85 200m. You can use your stock big red wheel. If you dont have the ability to make a bracket like mine you will also need the headlight mounting bracket for the M forks and the M fender.
Well, tell me what you think.