I'm seeing a variety of different bridge plates and wondered if someone could clear up a couple of questions..
The black plate with studs is the one that came with my "early" CA77. When it is mounted on the top of the forks it sits flat and only the large diameter studs (that go through the bridge plate) go down into the top of the forks. The two studs closest to the steering stem don't actually go through the plate and into the fork.
The blue plate is a spare I got with damper parts, and it looks like it would have the same mounting characteristic (only the large studs go down into the top of the forks).
The other black plate is is NOS 53231-271-000 and currently on eBay (I'm not the seller..). It looks like the studs might bolt into the top of the forks and extend through the plate (which is what the parts manual I have seems to indicate).
The black one I have (nice paint on it, eh?) is not the same as the NOS black one.. and the NOS black one is not the same as the blue one. I only see two part numbers 53230-257-000 and 53231-271-000 in the parts book.
Also, the blue one doesn't seem to fit on my bike because the blind nuts on the bottom of the plate prevent the plate from sitting down on top of the forks evenly.
My questions:
It seems like the black NOS plate would be the strongest of the three because there are four studs securing the plate to the top of the forks. ?
The blue one is probably from something other than a CA77?
Fork Top Bridge Plate 53231-271-000Fork Top Bridge Plate 53231-271-000
NC: the answer is yes, yes, yes. just kidding:-) You posted so many places I didn't know where to answer. My blue dream has just like your last picture; all 4 nuts welded to the front forks, so the bridge with the two welded on nuts is for an earlier frame like my '63.
I am still thinking you don't' have the stem all the way up into the frame goose neck or maybe they bent the lower triple tree when they forced the bridge down. what about putting a spacer to make up the 1/4" difference. I measured the two stems and they are the same length. let me know if you need more pictures and good luck. Clarence
This is still a puzzle though... my bridge plate had the nuts welded onto it and the shape of it is a little different from the NOS one above. I'm not quite sure why someone would go to the trouble of welding those nuts onto this bridge plate when the threads in the top of the fork are just fine. :shakes head: ...
And.. so.. if that blue bridge plate is a '63 and it has the nuts built onto the bottom of it, then the top of the forks for a '63 must not look the same as the forks shown above? But there's only one part number for all CA77 forks, and the only drawings I have of CA77 forks all look like the ones above. More mystery.
I need some help.... PLEASE?????Hi everyone! So, we're putting the 63 Dream back together, and like I stated in earlier posts we are finding out the hard way how the parts changed from Early to Late models. So with that being said, my fork bridge plate is MIA, we had it, painted it and lost it. We've looked everywhere and it seems to just have disappeared. So I ordered one off ebay. Guess what happened next? Yup, its not the right one. Apparently the 1963 and earlier dreams used a bridge plate that had welded on nuts. So now to my question, are the holes in the exact same place on the two plates? We figured we could weld some onto the plate but before got started I thought we would ask, are the welded nuts the ONLY difference? Thanks for your help.
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