RatZ brake upgrade - floating disks on Z1000J/GPZ1100 wheels

Now this is a bit of a blast-from-the-past. RatZ used to be my trusty old Kawasaki Z1000J, which in its last incarnation consisted roughly of about as many parts that belonged to a Z1000J as there were parts that were more intended for the proverbial Bulgarian tramway.

That said, there were a couple of mods that may (or may not) actually be interesting to other people as well. This post will deal with how to install OEM 300mm floatin disks onto stock wheels and while we're at it, fit some Nissin twin-pot sliding calipers out of a Bandit 600.

Step one, find the right brakedisks. I am not fully certain, whether some brakedisk manufacturers do this on purpose or not, but both the TRW Lucas and the Metalgear catalogues are pretty good for finding alternative brakedisks for your steed. The ones pictured below for example were originally intended for a '96 model VN1500, but be aware depending on country etc. they may be full floating or solid disks.

Next step, bigger brakes would mean an adapter for the brake caliper, even if you sticked with the stock calipers. The easiest way is to cut some stiff cardboard to size, pinch two through it and mount it to brake caliper mounts on the forks. Then put the brake caliper on the brake disk and put some toothpicks between the outer edge of the brake disk and the caliper, so you space them out a bit as they'd otherwise rub.

If you're as lucky as I was on the old Z1000J, you're pretty much done on this point as the new calipers had thinner mounting brackets than the old stockers, meaning that not exactly a lot of messing around was necessary and a bit of 10mm flat stock was all it took to get the calipers sit nicely on the brake disks.

... and as the adapter plates didn't look exactly as elegant as I had hoped, I took them off once more, bolted them together and radiussed them a bit. It didn't improve things much though... 😆

The next post will be about the earle's forks on the XS-triple sidecar, which are in fact progressing very nicely, but I don't want to go down the road of posting five updates on something, which shouldn't be THAT much work. Most likely, I'll split it in two.