• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

SM to TE conversion?

WoodsChick;111682 said:
Yeah, I'm running a 120/90-17 on the front in the top photo. I don't think Pirelli makes an MT21 wide enough for the rear, though.

WoodsChick
Click to expand...


The widest 17" is 130, it was actually a bit too wide for the XL it wasn't much narrower than the Karoo that comes on the TE (which actually rubs the muffler).
 
BrandonR;111685 said:
The widest 17" is 130, it was actually a bit too wide for the XL it wasn't much narrower than the Karoo that comes on the TE (which actually rubs the muffler).
Click to expand...

The rear rim on a TE is 2.5" wide but the rear rim on the SM is 4.25". Stock tire size on the rear SM rim is a 150. Harabec is looking for dirt-worthy tires for his SM rims so I'm thinking the 130 would be too narrow. At least, I didn't want to put that narrow of a tire on mine. The 120 on the front worked OK, though.




WoodsChick
 
BILLF;111292 said:
We sell lots of used frt wheel assy with brake caliper for this purpose.Then just pick any big 17 in. knobby for the back and keep tire pressure on the high side to protect the wide rim.You just swap front caliper and use original hose and master cylinder.Used frt wheel assy with caliper avg $450/500 max,if want new $900.I :thumbsup:have both in stk.billf
www.billshusky.com
Click to expand...

Not so easy.

The SM forks have larger size holes for the caliper bolts..you need to retap the TE caliper to 10mm. The SM forks are wider necesitating custom caliper and wheel spacers. The 21" wheel will hit and destroy the fender on the SM if it does not flip you over the bars.

What I did was lace a 19 x2.50 front rim to a TE hub and retaped the disk mounting bolts to 8mm. I run the SM brake disk. I run TKC80s on the front and rear. The 19" front required a trim of the SM fender to clear on bottoming.
 
jckid;111360 said:
The 17" knobbies look cool, but I've wondered by no one has set up an SM for dirt by keeping the stock rear, and then lacing up a 19" front wheel. Our BMW has a 19" front wheel, and it's seems big enough and has many tires options. I actually had considered going this route with my SM610, but in the end I figured out that the 610 it a bit much for me offroad. I just installed a set of Distanzia's for the occasional dirt road and then bought a KLX250 for offroad. :cool:
Click to expand...

That is what I did.
 
gasgaskid;113380 said:
What length and size spokes for the 19" front wheel conversion? Where can you get them?
Click to expand...

From Buccanan's, that guy in Calif that does those custom wheels...
 
gasgaskid;113380 said:
What length and size spokes for the 19" front wheel conversion? Where can you get them?
Click to expand...

From Buccanan's, that guy in Calif that does those custom wheels...

I laced a 2.50 x 17 rim to the rear too.
 
R_Little;112997 said:
Not so easy.

The SM forks have larger size holes for the caliper bolts..you need to retap the TE caliper to 10mm. The SM forks are wider necesitating custom caliper and wheel spacers. The 21" wheel will hit and destroy the fender on the SM if it does not flip you over the bars.

What I did was lace a 19 x2.50 front rim to a TE hub and retaped the disk mounting bolts to 8mm. I run the SM brake disk. I run TKC80s on the front and rear. The 19" front required a trim of the SM fender to clear on bottoming.
Click to expand...

I did the 21/18 conversion on my 08 SM610 and your info is not totally correct. The TE/SM forks both have the same 10mm holes in the forks. The TE just uses caliper bushings to make up the space difference for the 8mm bolt and positions the caliper in the correct spot. All you have to do is order the bushings, get a TE brake assy, wheel, and spacer and it is a total bolt on affair. The only problem was the TE master cylinder uses a different brake light swith so the SM wiring does not plug right in. I had to make an adapter for that.

The fender does rub and will eventually break. I got a used SM fender and a aftermarket TE fender from Dan at motoxotica, cut them in half and bolted them together to make a hybred fender that worked perfectly. Which looks just like the new TE630 fender by the way.

The cool thing about using a 19" rim is you can keep the SM brakes on but with 21" wheel the caliper hits the spokes.

Cool thing with the TE brakes, all I have to do to switch is unbolt the master cylinder, hose and caliper and the whole assy comes right of without cracking a brake line. Slide the SM stuff on and away I go.

But in truth, I hate th TE brakes. I got used to the SM brakes. Even with 17's and knobbies in the dirt the SM brakes were awsome...I see Bills Husky said to just use the SM master cylinder, I wonder if I could get a little better braking power that way. Hummm...

Frank
08 Husky610
 
There are reasonable highway tire options even in a 21/18 configuration. As far as I am concerned 90% of the reason to go from TE to SM wheels is to get the big brake. A TE front brake isnt very confidence inspiring if it has already hauled you down from speed anytime in the last 10 minutes. My inclination on the street is to primarily use the front brake, but on my TE610 I find myself using the rear quite a lot on pavement.
 
wesle616 said:
I did the 21/18 conversion on my 08 SM610 and your info is not totally correct. The TE/SM forks both have the same 10mm holes in the forks. The TE just uses caliper bushings to make up the space difference for the 8mm bolt and positions the caliper in the correct spot. All you have to do is order the bushings, get a TE brake assy, wheel, and spacer and it is a total bolt on affair. The only problem was the TE master cylinder uses a different brake light swith so the SM wiring does not plug right in. I had to make an adapter for that.

The fender does rub and will eventually break. I got a used SM fender and a aftermarket TE fender from Dan at motoxotica, cut them in half and bolted them together to make a hybred fender that worked perfectly. Which looks just like the new TE630 fender by the way.

The cool thing about using a 19" rim is you can keep the SM brakes on but with 21" wheel the caliper hits the spokes.

Cool thing with the TE brakes, all I have to do to switch is unbolt the master cylinder, hose and caliper and the whole assy comes right of without cracking a brake line. Slide the SM stuff on and away I go.

But in truth, I hate th TE brakes. I got used to the SM brakes. Even with 17's and knobbies in the dirt the SM brakes were awsome...I see Bills Husky said to just use the SM master cylinder, I wonder if I could get a little better braking power that way. Hummm...

Frank
08 Husky610
Click to expand...


You can even use the spacer from the SM wheel, I found that out today after thinking I was gonna have to order a separate spacer for awhile.
 
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