Red Baron Triple Clamps/ KTM 450 SMR
KTM 450 SMR's come with 18-20 mm adjustable offset triple clamps...
18 - 20 is great when you have a 21 " front wheel but not very good with a 17 " front wheel...I bought my bike from a friend who put 14 mm's on from a 2001 SX 125..they worked great but I felt I needed the extra 2mm to add a bit more stabilty, specially on high speed sweeping corners...I also run my forks down into the clamps sometimes depending on the track and the red barons are beefy enough to get away with that....plus the factory ones are cheesy lookin...
If you have the stock clamps now and want to step up I strongly recomend the Red Barons...the quality is very good as well the offset is amost perfect for most riders....
When you buy after market triples they rarely come with the fork tube/steering head tube or bearings so you will re use what came with your bike...unless your bearings are trashed which is unlikely...
I won't go into the complete tear down as most manuals/part manuals are quite clear, but I will say that If you want 18 mm offset with your old triples or 12 mm offset with your new triples then the small dot on the top of the steering head tube should be on the opposite number plate side (KTM thing).....its an eccentric (sp ?) shaped tube so depending on what direction the dot is in it will effect how much offset you will effectively be putting into your bike....I have a pict in my docs I will post after this....Since I know how well the bike handles with 14 mm offset I tried some high speed runs down the back roads near home....hard to tell w/o finding a twisty road so I will report back when I hit the track next week.....I love the look of the triples as well the very strong contruction and design....I highly recomend them to anyone who wants to improve the handling of their bike and wants a high quality well priced set of triples....
So, at the beginning of this I mentioned the 21 inch front tire deal, w/o getting into a very long dragged out conversation I will keep this to the reaon why some go with the lessor offset....
These bikes we ride are dirt bikes, the geometry was designed by some very smart people who factored in the design with a 21 inch front wheel in mind....having said that when we stick 17 inch front wheels on these bikes we effectively reduce the trail a great deal...when we reduce the trail we also reduce the stability of the motorcyle.... when we add triples with smaller offsets we are increasing the trail again close to what the engineers had originally intended...not to mention the tire contact patch increase
The offset of the triple clamp is the distance between the center of the fork leg and the center of the steering fork tube/stem... the greater the distance between them the less trail and less stabilty, vise versa...TO A POINT..there is a "happy medium" and it is possible to go the too far in either direction...
If you continued an imaginary line from the center of the steering tube at the same angle caried through to the ground and create another line vertically downpast the axel to the ground that distance between the two on the ground is called the trail.....Not to be confused with rake, rake as you will see in the pict is the angle of the forks in relation to the road...
I'm not suggesting everyone go buy a set of triple clamps, but what I am suggesting that If your bike is sprung for your weight and the suspension IE sags are spot on and you want more out of the handling of your bike then this would be a very very good way to go...
Well I hope that helps....
the last pict is of the old triple clamps...
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I thought it would be the best spot, used to have it on the number plate on my other bikes...
