Katana Owners Club U.K.

...well actually tyre...

I stripped the front end off the 400 over the weekend so I could clean out the old fork oil and add the new progressive springs I got from Hagon.

The front guard I noticed had spacers between it and the 4 fork top "lugs" - thought they were original (as I know no better) then I found the one mounting bolt that is on the side also had one about 8-10mm below it (unused). That seemed strange - almost as if someone has raised the guard for some reason.

Putting the wheel back in I actually read the tyre size and found it was 100/90-18 rather than 100/80-18 - hence why it was raised up! Given the wheel was then 20mm in diamter larger, the speedo I guess was reading slower than it should have - will I get any nasty surprises in the post?

Rob

Most speedometers read up to 5% slower than the actual speed so you should be ok, shows the pitfalls of buying an old second (or third, or fourth) hand bike, when i changed the rear shocks on my 250 i found out that every nut holding the old shocks on was a different size, even mixing metric and imperial sizes !

by my reckoning, a 100/90 tyre would only be 10mm taller than a 100/80 where it passes under the mudguard - would that cause a problem?

I haven't tried the phone GPS on that bike yet to see how the speedo reads, but the VStrom and car are definately going slower than indicated. They are both electronic spoeedo's, not sure how the old cable ones match up.

Yeah, re: 2nd hand bike's but that's the only choice with Katana's. It i amazing what some people will do. Sometimes needs must when you are out and about, but I would generally fix it proper once I got back.

Yeah I thought an extra 10mm in height. The spacers were about 6mm - I guess there wasn't enough clearance. I assume someone ordered it wrong and fitted and then found their error and fixed it the cheap way!

Anyway a new tyre is on order. I'm interested if handling will be better or just the same.

ask your "other half" if 10mm makes a difference in the ride

lomsavage wrote:ask your "other half" if 10mm makes a difference in the ride

Well it certainly handles even better than it did before with the proper size tyre on. I'm even more happy with the 400 now. Shame winter is coming...