Fitting the hydraulic disc brake

Fitting the hub was fairly self-explanatory, and the one problem I did have (front wheel not being central in the forks) I posted about previously, and I rectified it by straightening out some wear on one of the fork links. It is worth noting however that these hubs (mine's a SPAQ/Sterling jobby) don't require a nut between the link and the large plate on the right hand side. The hubs don't come with them, but at a recent parts fair I saw some of these hubs with nuts fitted - I guess the stall owner thought they were missing and fitted them!

Here's a pic of the assembly in place:



To connect it all I discarded the rather bulky rubber hose that came with the unit and bought a new slimmer Goodridge braided stainless steel one from http://www.busters-accessories.co.uk/. This is what I got:

Buildaline Adaptor Banjo 90deg 3/8 Jic Male 5.99 1 5.99
Buildaline Adaptor Banjo 45deg 3/8 Jic Male 5.99 1 5.99
S/B Buildaline Hose 1100mm Clear

The 90 degree banjo enabled me to avoid having any exposed hose at the top of the bike. I simply used a round file to create a hole in the top if the headset for the banjo and the small front brake wire to feed through. Here's the end result, a lot neater than any others I've seen:



And here's an internal shot, showing how it all worked out:

Here you can also just see a replacement white earth wire that I fitted from the headlight to the mounting point of the throttle guide. This provides a more reliable earth than the headlight rim as is standard. The loom comes in on the right on my bike, as I simply couldn't find the room on the left!

Headset / handlebar

Removing the headset is pretty straightforward, and the first step is to remove the headlamp. On an old bike, especially from India, you will probably find a complete mess:



One of the more difficult things was removing the old grips from the handlebars. I resorted to using a sturdy screwdriver and a hammer to chisel my way through, as WD40 simply didn't work. This pic shows the grip removed and my new black dog-leg lever fitted to the gear changer:



I went for this lever as it's a good match for my new hydraulic front brake lever, which you can see fitted here on my stripped down (but not cleaned!) headset:



Fitting this new hydraulic brake lever required some light filing on the tapered part of the handlebar. When re-fitting the throttle shaft I had some trouble getting it all to fit. I couldn't get the hole in the throttle wheel to line up with the hole on the end of the shaft. This must be because the new polished alloy switch housing for the new hydraulic lever is a couple of mm too long. The solution? File a couple of mm off the paddle that locates the other end of the shaft to move it all along a little: