I mentioned earlier how building a project on a budget is always a battle between what you'd like vs what you can afford.
I had some perfectly adequate OEM cast 749/999 Marchesini’s “spares” but the 749R/999RS project really deserved better (the cast rear rim is only 5.5")....but better = BIG $$$....hmmmm. Ain’t it funny how you start a project to supposedly make use of your spares/take-off parts...only to realise why you removed them in the first place?
So I took a calculated gamble on a 6" Galespeed forged aluminium rear wheel intended for...wait for it...a Suzuki B-King.
Why? It was only $400AUD ($310USD), and local, so no extra $100USD to ship it Downunder. It wasn’t a complete shot in the dark, some research found the B-King rear axle to be 28mm vs my 999 rear axle of 30mm, so pretty close. Fingers and toes crossed just a bearing replacement away from perfect.
I don’t know about you, I’d heard of Galespeed wheels but never actually seen any...so it was a very pleasant surprise when it turned up and was quite beautifully made, not just the rim but the sprocket/brake rotor carriers, and right down to the captive spacers.
Even the internal spacer married up between the sprocket carrier and inner wheel hub, is captive, just lovely stuff.
Best of all, this combination adds up to approx 1.5kg saved in unsprung rotating mass over the cast alloy rim I had on standby, and even a smidge lighter than a Marchesini forged alloy rim.
Interestingly, I discovered the sprocket fitment is exactly the same as Marvic. I have a cast Mg Marvic on the back of the 749R and a spare 520 alloy sprocket is a direct replacement for the steel B-King sprocket that came with the rim (Marvic sprocket fitted below):
Even the bloody Marvic sprocket carrier/cush drive is a perfect fit (see below):
Not sure why you would though, the Galespeed carrier is a much lighter and far more elegant billet solution:
Best of all? The bearings turn out to already be 30mm ID...same as 749/999 axle. The nicely machined Galespeed spacers are a perfect interference fit into the bearings and their wall thickness is what gives the 28mm ID for the B-King axle.
Hmmmm, decision time: I could just machine some 30mm spacers to fit the 30mm bearings to my Febur swingarm....but the spacers would just be floating around (awkward for wheel changes) where the interference fit/captive spacers inside inside the bearings are a much more integrated solution in the long run.
So it was just a matter of pushing out all the 28mm ID captive spacers (Suzuki fitment) and replacing the bearings with a set of 32mm ID units. FYI, the same spec 32mm ID bearings as previously fitted were a bank-breaking $17AUD each....bewdy, I'll have 3 thanks.
30mm ID bearing out:
32mm ID bearing in (bearing in the freezer, cush drive + heat gun = job's a good 'un):
Another episode of "Amateur Hour" on my mini-me lathe produced a rough facsimile of the beautifully machined Galespeed internal spacer:
It's a nice interference fit into the bearing, with the shorter lip a sliding fit inside the cush drive bearing, the outer sprocket carrier spacer will be captive in the carrier and butt up against the lip.
With that out of the way I could throw the wheel on and start checking things out. I could have used string lines and/or all sorts of things but an el-cheapo laser level/pointer made things pretty simple.:
Once centralised against the front wheel I was stoked to find the rear sprocket lined up perfectly with the front. The sprocket bolts clear the swingarm by literally 1mm, I suspect they'll get a haircut in the future.
Next I had to get the mongrel bearings out of the wheel itself, with absolutely no wriggle room on the spacer to be able to attack the bearings with any sort of punch. Frustration plus beer finally produced a solution in the form of a blind bearing puller, a classic case of the right tool for the job achieving in 5 minutes what an hour of faffing around without it couldn't.
Cue Episode 2 of "Amateur Hour" on the lathe making the outer spacers:
The finish isn't flash (you get what you pay for) but they do the job:
Put it all together:
And in she goes:
