fiber washers behind rotors

I'm working on my 86 vf 500 f. Have the front wheel off now and removed the rotors. There are fiber washers about .030 thick behind the rotor where it mounts to the wheel . one for each bolt. What purpose do these serve? Iost a few of them. Honda shows them avalible at 3 bucks each. If I need to have these on the wheel in was thinking about using a gasket punch and make Them out of a hard gaket material of plastic shim stock. The rear doesn't have any. And I've never seen anything like this on a motorcycle before.

 

That is interesting. Can't wait for a qualified response. There are none on the 06. Well mine anyways.

 

In my uninformed/useless opinion, I think they serve two purposes: spacer for proper alignment with the pads and noise reduction.

 

You need these washers! Plain and simple they act as a spacer and are a critical part. If you cant find them, you must and I say again, "MUST" bite the bullet and buy them at your local honda-rip-off dealer...

The rear wheels dont generally use them as the rotor is a direct bolt on and is not a floating rotor, where the front ones are. Front brake feel will be greatly affected withoot those washers. Just my two cents, I have seen more heinous things come around, thats why I love the sign I have seen in the past, it went something like this, "Shop Labour, $50.00 an hour, if you tried to fix it, $100.00 an hour." Also fond of this one (scale model) usually found on the front desk, it has a handgrenade with a number on it, usually 1 or something, caption on the bottom reads, "Complaint department, Take a Number."

Good luck with the miin-ceptor

 

SOB! I guess I was right for once.

 

Except the discs on a VF500 are not the floating kind. They are a one piece construction bolted to the centre hub of the wheel. I suspect the washers are used to aid alignment of the disc on the hub to compensate for the very small machining differences in the discs and the wheels.

Edit. Another possible reason for the washers is to minimise the heat transfer from the rotor into the the hub. With them being solid discs it's important they heat uniformily to prevent warping under heavy braking. If the disc is much cooler near the hub then the thermal gradient is more likely to cause warping. This is after all why most modern bikes have semi floating discs. Anyway just a hypothesis. feel free to argue.

 

Just get some gasket paper and stamp out your own.

Roger

 

got some of those nice gasket cutters you can wacka-wack on. I would not be a cheap bastage and buy new fibre washers. Thats just me though.

 

86 & 87 700s also have paper washers there.

 

I made some out of hard gasket material replaced all 12 of them they measured .030 thick so I used 1/32 material. Honda wanted 4 bucks a piece for them.