Longshot question

Probably never been done but has anyone ever mated a cb550 hub to a Harley rim.
I have the hub and the 17 inch Harley rim/wheel and was looking to mate the two then mate those to my Gsxr front end.

Any thoughts?

I guess my first question would be, are the hub and rim designed for the same number of spokes?

Yes they are both 40 spoke setups

Do you have an idea about brakes that will work with the hub and forks. I suspect the Gixxer forks are quite a bit farther apart than the stock ones.

I have a spacer for the brakes. Essentially makes them like the cognito moto setup.

Rims are drilled for their specific application. You can run into problems if a rim is drilled for a large hub or a conical hub and you are trying to mate it to a small hub as the spoke hole angles will be different. Also the lacing patterns can be different, again effecting the spoke hole angles. That being said if the Harley hub is similar to the CB hub it will probably work but you will need custom spokes. I have also heard of people "re-indexing" a rim to match their hub correctly. I don't really see a problem with that as motorcycle rims are massively over engineered most of the time anyway, but you will need to have a wheel builder do it properly.

Okay, thanks for the information. Have you ever laced a hub to its non-original rim? If so, what kind of problems can arise?

I have only done this on one set of wheels, and it was a combination known to work.
I think DoctoRot has laid out the most common problems-
Spoke angle
Lacing pattern,
Spoke length
And I would add-
Spoke diameter
Number of spokes (already confirmed)

If there is a specialist in your area, it would probably save time, money and headaches to take the hub and rim to him and ask his advice. If you are adventurous and don't mind risking a little money, help from this forum and some you tube videos may produce what you want.

Thanks again

Might we suggest contacting Buchanan Spoke and Rim for advice and the wheel build.
www.buchananspokes.com/

If not done right, having a custom wheel come apart while underway puts everyone around at risk.

Good Ridin'
slmjim & Z1BEBE

BlackEyeCafe wrote: Okay, thanks for the information. Have you ever laced a hub to its non-original rim? If so, what kind of problems can arise?

I’ve only built wheels where the rim was drilled for its specific application but I do know it can be done

Thanks for all the help guys. I will be contacting Buchanan's