Frankenfork

[Audioslave784]

My '80 850 L forks had pitted tubes, so I picked up some '79 1000 L forks to replace them. Unfortunately I discovered that the caliper mounts on the lowers are different than mine so I cannot do a straight swap.

What I would like to do now is to swap the tubes from the 1000L on to my 850L lowers. I had 2 questions about this swap:

1. The 1000 tubes are about 2 inches longer than my 850 tubes. Can I correct this height by modifying the springs or spacers so it sits lower?

2. The tube diameters match, but am I going to run into compatibility issues between these uppers and lowers?

[Audioslave784]

Well I have found the answers to my own questions. There don't seem to be any fitment issues in putting the forks together, but the 850 lowers are much more shallow than the 1000 lowers, and combined with the longer 1000 forks the compressed length of the 850/1000 fork is about 5" longer than the original 850 one. Way to long, even if I could lose a few inches my cutting the springs or something.

On a related note, I will soon be selling some 37mm '79 1000L forks. Good seals and perfect chrome!