gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

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sportston
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Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by sportston »

Alan H wrote: My 550A with GS550 wheels and three discs - the GS550 swing arm is a direct fit. Then the fun starts making the rear brake work!
The Kettle's a L model and the pic was taken on the Isle of Man at the Classic TT last year.
Ohh, interesting! I toyed with the idea of fitting a disc to the rear of mine, but decided not to on the grounds of difficulty and expense. Probably it is not so necessary on a smaller bike like mine. Have you found that it was a worthwhile mod?
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tz375
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Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by tz375 »

There's a GS rear wheel with drum brake that I had in a stash of parts that dropped straight onto a GT750 without changes to brake mechanism. I don't know which year but it's the later GS style spoke pattern.
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Alan H
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Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by Alan H »

sportston wrote: Have you found that it was a worthwhile mod?
Better brakes are always worthwhile. Plus, it annoys the purists.
Think of how stupid the average person is, then realise that half of them are more stupid than that.
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johnu
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Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by johnu »

Alan H wrote:
sportston wrote: Have you found that it was a worthwhile mod?
Better brakes are always worthwhile. Plus, it annoys the purists.
No doubt about that! Twin discs on my 500, wouldn't have it any other way :up:
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jabcb
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Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by jabcb »

An alternative for the GT250/GT380 front brake is the salty_monk twin-piston caliper upgrade.

That’s what we are doing with the GT250 cafe project. We are using a Kawasaki Ninja caliper + a larger rotor + the salty_monk adapter.
Salty_Monk is a Suzuki GS forum member that came up with the upgrade — he sells the needed adapter on the forum.

The upgrade uses a larger-than-stock brake rotor. So the GT250/GT380 use a GT500/GT550/GT750 sized rotor.
(Sorry, don’t know if there is a rotor for a GT500/GT550/GT750 upgrade.)

We are in the middle of the project, so this is what it looks like so far:
Image

Parts not on the bike yet are: EBC VMD3019 rotor & Nissin master cylinder with 11mm piston.
BAS (Bike Acquisition Syndrome) - too many bikes but have room for more

Suzuki:
GT750 2x75
GT550 72 & 75
GT380 72
T500 69 project & 73 project
T350 69 & 71
Honda 85 CB650SC & 86 CB700SC
09 Triumph Bonneville SE
sportston
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Suzuki 2-Strokes: FZ50, GP100, RG125 Gamma, GT380, Bandit 1200S

Re: gt380 with a featherbed frame? Or a Seeley?

Post by sportston »

On the front, I just went for a gs750 caliper. It bolts straight on, no adaption needed. Still only single piston but better pads and different size piston. Time will only tell if it works well enough. Like Jabcb I swapped forks so the caliper is mounted behind the fork instead of infront. Should help handling a little.
The rear has a gs400 wheel with drum brake. Its only a rear brake so should be fine and reliable, not so much chance of seizure, no seals to leak, no pistons to corrode etc. I plan to use a rod instead of cable to operate it, to avoid the chance of cable seizure causing sticking.
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