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Fork me? Fork you! you motherForking forkbag

3153 Views 20 Replies 11 Participants Last post by  Pete Casper, 
ROSKO
I gots me some Fork questions....

the set-up I'm running seems to have good compression but the rebound is SLOW. So i added some spacers for preload with very little result.

Anyone want to share their fork set-up techniques?

BORN TO LURK, FORCED TO WORK.
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F
Yeah.

FR

BTW, when you add spacers, do you just put them above the springs? And how many and what thickness? I've never frigged around with that, just changed the oil and tried to adapt to the forks, or frig around with the height in the triple clamp, or frig around with the rear shocks, since those are adjustable pre-load.

And then I just ride the thing. As Randy Mamola opined a few years ago when he was racing the BMW Boxer Cup, the thing that's adjustable is the rider. Not that I can even begin to suggest that I have any of his riding/adapting skilz, but I also don't have much chassis tuning skilz, so I try to learn how to deal with the vintage stuff by just riding it.

But having said all that, I'm guessing that the fork oil is too heavy, or maybe the springs are just shot?


FR
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When I first started racing flattrack, I put 20w fork oil in the stock forks. I didn't really notice a problem, except on some of the rougher dirttracks going into the turns over some of the "stutter bumps" which are probably similar to T3 at Louden, when I'd get some serious vibes/looseness. I didn't know what to do about it until I watched some video of me racing over those conditions, and the front end was waaay too stiff. It was actually scarier watching the vid than doing the racing, the forks weren't compressing very much 'cause the oil was too heavy, and I had them set up as high as possible in the tree. Just lowering the front end an inch made a big difference, and also going down to 15 or 10 weight helped smooth things out.
My point is, it helped me a lot to see some video to determine the solution to the problem.
I also learned to put a ziptie on my fork leg to find out how much fork travel I was actually getting, put it on just above the slider before you go out for practice. When you come back in note the position to see if you're getting full or close to full compression.


FR
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