SuzukiSavage.com /cgi-bin/YaBB.pl General Category >> Rubber Side Down! >> Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution /cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1359173161 Message started by John in Kalifornia on 01/25/13 at 20:06:01

Title: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 01/25/13 at 20:06:01 Well, I'm back. Quit working on my Street Tracker project til I could get the pipe and seat from Ryca. Finally, Ryan said the parts may be in next week so I brought the bike back to the garage for more work. The big bugaboo with the Ryca Street Tracker (and Scrambler) bikes were that they still used the Cafe Racer rearsets. In order to mount the foot pegs in a more "conventional" position the exhaust must be changed. Since there were no aftermarket high pipes available, as far as I know, the only options were to leave the forward controls or go to rearsets. The few "mid controls" that I've seen looked kinds Rube Goldberg, with metal plates or some such. I was looking for a more elegant solution. Some of the older bikes, from 70's and earlier had one piece foot peg/sidestand assemblies. I took the assembly off my LT2 Yamaha Enduro and did a fit check on the Savage. Once you get the pipe out of the way you can see where it might work. The Savage has a twin loop frame under the engine. All you would have to do is weld on some nuts to the frame to match the holes in the plates on the footpeg assembly. I ordered an assembly from Ebay for a different Yamaha Enduro model. This has the serrated metal toothed pegs which are more in keeping with the Street Tracker theme. Also the pegs fold. That is a good thing as even with the extended shocks in the rear the Savage is pretty close to the ground. http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C01%5C25%5Cbikepics-2507260-800.jpg Minor detail is that the frame tubes would be too far apart so you would have to cut the foo tpeg assembly and weld in an extension, which could be as simple as a tube with an I.D. to match the size of the cross piece. http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C01%5C25%5Cbikepics-2507259-800.jpg An additional bonus is there is a sidestand built into the assembly. I think that some have had "issues" with the Ryca sidestand. What do you all think of my brilliant idea? John in Kalifornia

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by Smokestack on 01/26/13 at 03:45:37 Well done.  Thought out, clean solution.  Throw up some build pics if you can; I'm interested in the results.  How high will they sit? As in; willthey need to be removed to access the clutch/belt covers?

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 01/26/13 at 03:58:11 superb - going to try to set up some mid controls in the spring (I don't have have access to heating where the bike is ::)) and was kind of dreading all the faffy fabricating it would involve. This is cool. Show us more  :)

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by teabowl13 on 01/26/13 at 07:47:46 Yeah! That looks super-slick as long as it all lines up. Are you getting the RYCA High pipe? If so; how much are they asking for that? I've been tempted to do that too, but funds are not there for that just yet...  >:( It would be great if the side-stand length worked out to be just the right size; you might need to shorten it or lengthen it. Have you checked for that yet? The bonus is that with the exhaust raised out of the way, you have almost a foot of room or so I'm guessing to position the pegs wherever you want front-to-back.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 01/28/13 at 02:09:31 According to the option list in the Ryca Tracker kit order form the pipe is $300. I think he said that there is an option of either bare metal or chromed. I think I will go for a flat black scheme. Haven't decided on the location of the pegs yet. Think I'll wait til the seat and tank are mounted. Just had the idea on the pegs and did a quicky trial to check the feasibility. BTW, does anybody know about the splines on the shifter shaft, are they "standard" or some weird Suzuki thing? I'm hoping to just use a shifter directly off the engine and avoid linkages. John in Kalifornia

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by WD on 01/28/13 at 21:52:24 Fairly generic, should cross with a couple older air cooled GS shifters and MAYBE Yamaha XS twins and Kawasaki KZ twins. I KNOW Honda ones I've tried have been too big or too small depending on the donor bike. Worked at a bike graveyard/parts shop for a couple years. Several years (and truckloads of beers) ago... Whatever you find to fit the splines will need to be heated and shaped to clear the side casing. Not the best placement out there.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 01/29/13 at 03:36:21 I had been informed on another thread that the savage shifter shaft is not strong enough to take the direct force of a clumsy arse boot (well mine anyway) - so that a direct shifter arm setup is no good. Can people who have more knowledge of savage engine insides give us their opinion on this? Is the shifter too flimsy for the more standard setup (sans linkages) or is it good to go? I'm gonna go mid controls in the spring and would really prefer the standard direct arm setup as well but don't fancy breaking stuff  ;) John I can give you the verdict on an xs650 shifter arm fitting or not as I have one on hand - as soon as it's a bearable day here I'll go out back and check.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 01/29/13 at 07:55:00 Hey, all you guys, let's figure this out together. What bikes have the same shift shaft splines? I haven't checked, but I'm sure the crotch rocket GSXR or whatever nomenclature Suzukis have remote shifter arms. Maybe the linkage from one of them would fit. So all you guys who have various bikes around do the list a favor and try out some levers. All I have is the same old Yamaha Enduro that I temporarily removed the foot peg assembly from. Will report results. I tried cross referencing part numbers for the "shaft, gear shifting" and "arm, gear shift link" but couldn't find any common number with other bikes.   I would rather use an unmodified shifter arm and adjust the connection hardware to fit, since we're already welding to attach the foot peg assembly anyway. Have to fabricate pivots for the brake and shift levers. Would like to use an off road type toothed brake pedal, more in keeping with the Street Tracker theme than some foo foo street bike pedal. Looks like this is going to get complicated. I might just build the rest of the bike and leave the shifter/foot peg/brake for later after I have accumulated some more parts and information. John in Kalifornia

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 01/29/13 at 19:14:56 OK, I measured the shifter shaft and the piece that it connects to. arm. The shaft has 21 teeth, an odd number. This is very coarse compared to most shifter shafts which have many more teeth for finer adjustment. Of course, the shift lever is not connected directly to the transmission and can be adjusted in small increments with the threaded connecting shaft. The diameter of the shifter shaft is 12mm, about half an inch. I don't see where this is much different than those on other bikes that would make it more fragile. There would be quite a bit of a bend necessary in to clear the engine casing if one was to use a shift lever connected directly to the shaft. John in Kalifornia..

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 02/06/13 at 01:42:22 Hi I'm back, I made an engine stand from plans in the Tech section today and took the motor out. I figured it out. The rear motor mount can be used to pick up one of the holes in the Enduro foot peg assembly. Weld a nut to the frame for the front hole and you're done. I had to cut apart the Enduro foot peg assembly and insert a 5/8 rod for a spacer. Cost me 14 bucks at OSH for a 3 foot piece that I only used six inches of. The left side uses a 7/16 bolt and nut. On the right side I went to a 9/16 partially threaded screw, The unthreaded portion acts as a pivot for the stock Savage brake pedal. There is a positive stop at the top and the return spring even fits! The nuts that are welded to the frame have to be angle ground to fit the taper of the frame tubes. I painted the front flat of the hex heads so that when they are welded the alignment will be easy to check. I used spacers made up from the cut off front motor mount tubes. They are needed to make up for the thickness of the nuts welded to the frame. Naturally the rear motor mount thru bolt will need to be longer than stock. It seems that Ryca is the only source for these longer bolts. They have 190, 230 and 240 mm. I was going to cut one of the too long front bolts down and thread it 10mm x 1.25, even bought a die, but it was hard going. I don't have a vise fastened to my bench. Tomorrow hope to get my bro to weld it up. This just might work! John in Kalifornia http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C06%5Cbikepics-2512553-full.jpg http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C06%5Cbikepics-2512554-full.jpg http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C06%5Cbikepics-2512556-800.jpg http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C06%5Cbikepics-2512557-800.jpg

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by Dave on 02/06/13 at 05:20:00 You can get any size bolt you want from Fastenal.  You have to search around a little bit to find the affordable ones...sometimes they have more than 1 available in any give size.....and the prices can vary widely.  There is a Fastenal up the street from me and the special orders take a few days to come in.   http://www.fastenal.com/web/home.ex

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 02/06/13 at 13:55:21 love this thread - keep it comin  :)

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 02/06/13 at 15:46:03 Ok we got the welding done. In order to get to the bottom of the frame we raised the rear of the bike with an engine stand. Now to clean up the welds and paint the pegs and frame. After assembly, I'll check the kickstand for fit. It may work with minimal rework, hard to tell til the engine and proper shocks are installed. John in Kalifornia http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C06%5Cbikepics-2512752-800.jpg

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 02/08/13 at 07:21:23 Checked the xs650 shifter today. XS650 shifter is the same diameter (about 12mm) as the savage but the XS650 has much finer teeth. I didn't try and fit it on my savage as I didn't want to push it on and mess up my Savage shifter shaft, but by eye I'd say it's a no go.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by WD on 02/08/13 at 10:09:55 Honda twins are a no go. At least not the early 60s to mid 70s ones. Too bad, the old CL parts would look right at home on a scrambler styled Savage. Coarse splines you are most likely looking at pre oil in frame British or Ironhead Sportster era. Use your spine clamp off the stock mechanism as your base and make something unique. Buy a reproduction CL shift lever, cut to size and weld it on your clamp. The CL shifter/brake lever I have are heavily serrated and match the factory toothed foot rests pretty well.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 02/19/13 at 19:12:58 Back again, Here’s the controls installed on the bike. Big picture shows the relative positions of the foot pegs. The green circle is where the stock forward controls are located. The Ryca rear set location is in yellow. The mid controls are located in the “conventional” location under the motor between the clutch and countershaft. http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C19%5Cbikepics-2518692-800.jpg Next photo shows the details of the brake pedal. I was able to use the stock Savage pedal. It pivots on a 9/16th bolt and returns to a positive stop via the stock spring. There should be a strait shot to the rear brake arm on the wheel with no bends. Thread the rod 6mm by 1.0 on both ends and you can use the stock adjuster at the rear and a clevis at the front. I had to use a number of washers to space the pedal away from the engine case. http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C19%5Cbikepics-2518690-800.jpg The left side shows the stock shifter which is just slipped over the transmission shaft. Of course, this won’t work unless I weld it to the small adapter that came stock on the bike. If I can find an aftermarket steel (not cast) shifter with the correct splines then that can be bent to clear the engine cases. What do you think? John in Kalifornia http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C02%5C19%5Cbikepics-2518691-800.jpg[/b][/size][/size][/b]

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 02/20/13 at 03:51:06 I think I'm in love!   this rocks  8-) Love it when people smarter than me show me how it's done.

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by LANCER on 02/20/13 at 04:23:54 Out-freaking-standing !

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by strang on 02/20/13 at 09:23:13 I know you are doing the flat tracker thing but if you'd wanted to - would the stock exhaust have fit?

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 02/20/13 at 10:10:28 I don't think so. I just checked. Both the stock exhaust and foot peg assembly are in the same location under the motor. John

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by teabowl13 on 02/21/13 at 07:42:36 THIS LOOKS GREAT JOHN! Do you have a M/C Salvage near by? You could take the stock shift rod connector with you and dig through boxes of shifter arms to find one that fits; make sure you take a measurement for roughly how long you need the arm to be... The Pegs I'm using on my project are from a Yamaha FZ, and that shifter arm has a linkage connection. I can't remember for certain, but I'm pretty sure the Yamaha connector slid right onto the shaft. It never occurred to me they would be different across brands since they are at least all Japanese. Maybe a Yamaha Arm is what you need? :-?

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by John in Kalifornia on 05/15/13 at 14:20:25 I found a salvage yard today that had what I was looking for. It is a shift lever from a '79 GS750, according to the tag. Has the same 21 splines as the Savage. Of course it will have to be heated and bent to clear the alternator case but it's a start. John in Kalifornia http://p1.bikepics.com/2013%5C05%5C15%5Cbikepics-2555707-800.jpg

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by njrmahoney on 08/24/13 at 07:19:39 Yamaha Tank?

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by akhsha on 07/05/20 at 10:34:20 Bumping to ask if there's any way to resurrect the photos in this thread. Forgive me if this is impossible or an unreasonable request. The descriptions sound awesome and I'd love to see this bike!

Title: Re: Mid Controls Street Tracker Brilliant Solution Post by verslagen1 on 07/05/20 at 11:23:01 it's in here somewhere... https://www.bikepics.com/suzuki/savage?search=suzuki%20savage

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