[LQQKR]

Originally Posted by ccolwell

You can make them fit. Here is my take on doing so, a search will bring up more info. If I were doing it again, I would just as soon put on SP forks and save some work, but when I did it SP forks were hard to find and expensive.

Putting SBK forks on a 1996 900SS. I was lucky enough to get the whole front end off a 1999 996 but doing it piecemeal could be cheaper with the right parts. 1. Forks – Bruce Myers told me that the brake calipers off the 900SS will fit on 916 forks. They do not fit on 996. Fortunately, I got calipers in the deal. 2. You will need different handlebars to fit the larger forks, ones that fit a 9x6. 3. Triple clamp – The SBK forks are larger at the top and smaller at the bottom than the stock forks (doesn’t make any sense to me either). You can either have the stock upper triple clamp bored out to fit and have shims made for the lower triple tree or get the clamp and kit from Cycle Cat. When I checked around, only BCM Ducati had experience doing the conversion. The price difference was a wash for me particularly since I would have had to send the parts to BCM to do the work. The Cycle Cat piece is gorgeous and fits well. Use any easy-out to remove the safety bolts holding the ignition switch in place. 4. Axle – if you use the stock wheel, you will need to have spacers made as the 900 axle is 20mm and the SBK is 25mm. There may be a way to find the right bearings and inner spacer to fit a 25mm axle to the stock wheel, but it would take some research. The 996 wheel is noticeably lighter (and so are the disks) and I can feel the difference on the street. 5. Speedometer drive – if you go with the larger axle, you will need a 9x6 speedo drive. You need to replace the worm and roller in the SBK drive with the parts from the SS drive. The roller slides right out. As for the worm gear, first there is a hollow locator pin that needs to be driven out. A drill bit works well. Then put the brass end in a vise and gently tap the speedo housing off. Note that it is easy to crack the housing. Both the worm gear and the pin will slide right in to their new homes. On the 996, there is no provision for mounting a speedo cable guide, but it seems to doing fine without. The torque settings I got from someone on the Index are 63 Nm for the axle nut, 19 Nm for the axle clamp bolts, and 43 Nm for the caliper bolts.

WOW!!!! How much did that end up costing you?? Thanks for the detailed info.