Virago front wheel

Hi All

I'm thinking of reducing the size of the front wheel on my Virago 535 from 19" to a chunky tyred 17" rim.

Would anybody happen to know what front wheel would fit? Suggestions/advice welcome

Hi,

When I put together my XJ wheels I found it difficult to find something that would fit straight in & cheaply.
You could search Ebay or & the breakers for a 125 supermoto wheel or go down the route of having a 17" rim laced to your existing Virago hub.
I built my own wheels using other Yamaha hubs with similar wheel bearing sizes to the XJ & used rims from a Chinese 125 supermoto. The Chinese wheels cost just under £100, I wasn't intersetd in the hubs or sokes so they were junked. New stainless spokes came from Central Wheel Components, Hagon also do spokes etc..
Cheap rims can be had from the breakers of motocross or trials bikes possibly either in 17" or 18".A rear wheel woul dbe best as they are normally a 2.15 wide so good for fronts. I used this method on both my previous race bikes. Yamaha RD350 & Suzuki T20 of which one rim only cost me £2.00 at an autojumble.

Check your wheel bearing sizes then cross reference them with likely candidates of bikes with wire wheels. That way all you need to worry about is the spacing to centre the wheel. My XJ uses a SR125 front hub(17" wheel) & XT550 rear hub for this very reason which made life so much easier as you maybe lucky & be able to reuse your existing spacers?????

Why a chunky tyre though?? Not great for carving through the twisties in a cafe racer manner??

Good luck
Cheers.
Col.

Hi Col,

Thanks for the advice. I do love the handling on my bike so don't really want to mess with it too much - will a smaller chunkier front wheel make that much difference?

The reason I was looking at changing was because of these pics, they look pretty awesome but aesthetics are secondary and if the turn in worsens then I'll probably give it a miss...


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Hi Friz,

my apologies mate I thought you were wanting to put a chunkier tyre on the bike not a wider rim/tyre combination like the ones in the photgragphs. My mistake...
The black top photo has a rear to front wheel conversion I believe which is a popular converson in the States to get the look.
Traditionally tyres are slimmer on the front to improve steering input & wider in the rear for that grip required to transfer the power of the bike to the road. I can't imagine it will handle that great with a tyre a similar width to the rear although those photos do look good.
A smaller front wheel should sharpen the handling on your bike. If I was doign it I woul dmaybe look into buying longer rear shocks aswell to further sharpen the steering & gain back some ground clearance with fitting a smaller diameter front wheel. Or even buy a different rim for the rear, a 17" possibly..??? Does the 535 run a 15" or 16" at the moment??

Cheers

Col.

Hey Col,

The rear is a 16". I was thinking of raising the back possibly up to 2 more inches and have her arse way up high in the air. The thing is, she's shaft driven and, with the new forward riding position, the weight distribution is much further forward so she gets a little frisky under heavy braking in conjuction with downshifting so I doubt raising the back end further would do her any favours.

Getting back to the front wheel, I've been reading some forum posts and without changing the forks (as a minimum), I'm pretty limited with what I can do. As I said earlier, I really don't want to compromise the handling, especially the turn in so although it seems that reducing the rim diameter will make her sharper, the compromise is reduced stability.

I might just leave well alone!!!

Cheers,

Frizie