I started out with the front brakes. I had decided early on that I wanted twin brakes since it just looks a lot better with two than a single sided job. It took me a while to get my front fork supplier to understand that I needed to know how the Brembo F08 brake cylinders were going to be fitted to the front fork sliders and therewith what the distance between the brake discs’ business ends was going to be. Knowing that I pulled up the front wheel drawing to see what the width was of the front hub and now I was ready to “design” the discs.

I Googled quite a bit but could only find disc suppliers catering for the aftermarket of established brands/models. Nobody is listing a brand called Seeley MkII so I was starting to despair until it struck me that there is a guy in Sweden called Acke Rising who in his company ISR Brakes is doing exactly what I needed. Acke makes brake components in all sorts of shapes and his website has a form where you can just fill in the dimensions you want and mail off to him ( if you have his email address ).

Acke was born in 1947 and is not a believer in getting bombarded with emails so he keeps the address away from his website. However, there is a phone number so he can be reached and if he smells business he will give you his email address.

He quickly assigned a part number to my discs and here is what they look like: Outer diameter = 280 mm and disc thickness 5 mm.

Hitting these brakes should be like throwing out an anchor around a roadside tree.

Having settled the business end of the braking system I turned my attention to the rear brake. For us normal ( or subnormal ) riders the rear brake is just there because it is required and not because it is going to contribute much to slowing the bike down. I started out with selecting the caliper. First I was flirting with the AP people in the UK, making replicas of the classic AP Lockheed brake cylinders. However, I could not make sense of their drawings so I gave up that idea. I saw that Acke had a beautiful caliper with an integral bracket but was afraid this would be too modern to get “approved”. However, I consulted with Irmgard at the “Grab the Flag” organization and she gave her thumbs up so I was back to Acke again. His standard unit just needed a bit of modification and it looks like this:

The caliper takes a 210 mm disc which is also made by Acke and it looks like this:

The discs are drilled to look like Swiss cheese. The title promised a Rear Master Cylinder as well but in fact Acke forgot to include it in the shipment to me so I will have to add it later on, wheneverhe finds time to send it to me.

This was my first attempt at putting my story together, the first time to photograph the parts and the first time to combine text and photos. Far from perfect but will do for the time being.

The front brake calipers will be dealt with under the Front Fork heading, as well as the front brake master cylinder – once the units hit my doorstep.