Showa and Nissin Create Integrated Fork and Caliper
The design is claimed to reduce weight while also helping to dissipate heat and improve rigidity
If you’ve not heard of Hitachi Astemo, you are forgiven, as the brand sits a level above companies like Nissin, Keihin and Showa, helping each of them to develop new products.
Two of those brands launched a new product at the end of last year, with this funky-looking caliper from Showa and Nissin sailing under the radar at EICMA. The new system is an integrated front fork and brake caliper system, and while it looks like a fairly unusual system, the benefits are claimed to be significant.
For many years, most new motorcycles have calipers mounted radially, in that two posts spout from the bottom of the fork leg. Bolts then run down the caliper, clamping the business end of the system to the posts. It’s a system that has never really been questioned, although Hitachi Astemo thinks there might be a better way to do it.
The system is this, the integrated fork and caliper, which sees the bottom of the fork leg and the caliper machined from a single billet. The claimed main benefits of the design are an increase in rigidity, with the system offering up a much larger connection between the fork and the caliper, and improved cooling. With a large amount of material joining the caliper to the bottom of the fork, the dissipation of heat should be much more free-flowing than with traditional radial mounting.
Its makers claim a five per cent reduction in caliper heat thanks to the new design, while it’s also said to improve rigidity thanks to the more hefty, one-piece design. The final claim is that the new design 200 grams lighter than a traditional radially-mounted caliper system.
All those benefits songs good on paper, although it’s still not clear how easy the caliper will be to live with, to service and to change the pads on. With the caliper locked in the same position as the front fork, question marks still remain around whether or not these claimed benefits will outweigh any negatives that arise when it comes to servicing the brakes.
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Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
