Bottom Yoke

In the aftermath of the Earth, sky, Earth, Sky, Tarmac interface, I had begun to uncover more and more worrying damage. One of the unusual items that was damaged was the bottom yoke. It seems that this is quite a poor design by Suzuki, and from endless telephone calls to breakers it seemed almost impossible to find one that was not damaged in exactly the same way.

For those of you who don't know, the GSXR1000 k1 and k2 bottom yoke is identical to the GSXR750 k1, and k2 bottom yoke, which should, in theory, make finding one a little easier. Every breakers that I contacted didn't have a standard yoke undamaged, and I started to get worried that this was going to work out even more expensive. Thoughts of one-off custom made yokes started to creep into my mind. "Would look awesome" I thought, until the realisation that I would be covering them up with a fairing hit me, and that would be a crime against some stunning one-off craftsmanship.

Blacks Bike Shop said that they had a standard bottom yoke on a GSXR750 k2, so i agreed a price with them, only to get a telephone call an hour later saying that they had broken the steering damper mount whilst removing them. Exactly the same part damaged on mine! Now, whilst I know that the damper mount is not crucial to the strength of the yoke, I did not want to resort to a clamp around the fork leg and turning the damper mounting bolt upside-down - seems a little pointless in my opinion.

Fortunately, whilst ringing around a few places that make one-off yokes, one of places told me that they had loads of the standard ones as their customers bring in complete front ends and then ditch the yokes wanting trick ones made for their bikes. They were simply taking up space intheir workshops so sold me a set, dirt-cheap - RESULT!!

Looking at the yokes you can see why the steering-damper mounting lug breaks off so easily, the lug itself is only about 3mm thick and quite long. Any violent head-shaking from the bike would easily snap it off - laws of leverage and all that!!

I might consider reinforcing the mounting lug somehow, but for the moment this is enough to get another step closer to rolling again.

Interestingly enough, take a look at the head-race bearings that Suzuki have opted for..... not taper-rollers as you'd normally expect. I spoke to a main-dealer about this and it seems that they have never yet replaced a set of head-race bearings in a GSXR k-series bike - could this be a better design of bearing for a bike that spends most of its time on just one wheel?