Old Calfab article

[Rigaman]

I have some old 3 wheeling magazines from 86, and I came across this article. I thought it was cool, and I wanted to share it.

[86T3]

Thanks for sharing this, this is a great article. I was just mentioning unsprung weight to ben, i'm glad there s something i can show now

[Mosh]

There were different versions too. Your ad leads me to believe that it shows a "redesigned or updated" swing arm. If you look at the pic with the gold one on ebay, you will notice that they chose to reinforce the carrier tube with flat pieces later in production. The reason why, would be that in the first designs, they had stand-up gussets. It created a problem in 3 ways. First, the caliper parking brake or block off plate would not clear the gussets. Secondly, you could not get to the bracket mounting bolts. Third, you only could roll the carrier back so far before the caliper bottomed on the swinger tube and did not allow for full adjustment.
At some point someone pointed that out to them. I have a early design 86 that someone actually cut the gusset out so they could get the caliper on and adjust the chain. i had it repaired along with getting rid of that chincy slider design they had. I had the swinger modded to hold a stock chain slider. Once I mounted the swinger on the machine I realized the brake caliper issue. I will be remedying that issue with either a YZ caliper or just modifying a 85 carrier bracket to relocate the caliper further back and up on the swing arm buy altering the pin slot location.

Just some info to look for when scouting these things out.

Compare the scanned article with this pic from the recent ebay machine(Attached below).. They both show updated designs.
The other pics are my 86 swingarm you can clearly see the design flaws being a issue. It wont be for long.


Shows caliper clearance issue..









Shows update chain slider work I had done..





Shows the swinger when I got it. You can see where the gusset was cut for clearance before I had it repaired.

[xrider]

I have to agree with mosh. I have owned 3 different calfab swingarms for the 85 & 86 250r. All 3 had different gussetting at the carrier

[Rigaman]

Oh wow. That's real cool to see

[christph]

Great information. Someday I want to reproduce some old-school swingarms, e.g., Westcoast and CAL-FAB. I'm building my collection so I can copy the designs and dimensions accurately. I'm currently taking welding classes so I can develop my TIG skills. I'm thinking the CAL-FAB will be a lot harder to reproduce than the Westcoast.

[Marty]

Mosh that is cool to see your Cal Fab, thanks for posting pics of it!