fork tuning for enduros

Good to see you got her back together Weed for this weekends ride. So what evil deeds did you have to promise the missus to get the shed time needed for the rebuild ? Looking forward to seeing & hearing just how much difference it makes. Upside is I wont have to eat your dust all weekend as you'll be so far out in front it will have disapated by the time I get anywhere near you. :lol:

well...wouldn't it be good if it made that much difference.sounds like a good pub story.
because i lack a bit of natural riding ability,i'm just trying to make up for it... fine tuning the machine.
nothing ventured.... nothing gained.
all good fun working out what works & what doesn't.
keeps me out of the pub.
catch up soon for a rum/husaberg session.....
..weed..

popup said:

hey lads
done a little fork modification, based on bushy's idea of increasing travel in the front forks.
"simple as" really,& if i don't like it,i can just put back in the original set up.
fork travel has gone from 295mm std to 310-315mm
remember if the same is done for the later model forks the gain is more 25-30mm extra travel because of the extra long top outs.
basically,the idea like bushy says(once it is valved to suit it) is to have the same bottoming resistance but use the extra travel in plushness.
that is the way i intend to valve it.
tried it out on the weekend,& had the front wheel off the ground many times & the short top outs were fine,no clanging or banging.
what cha recon?
..weed..

Click to expand...

Me like. Functional and simplistic. I might even consider this mod myself to extend the extension stroke. And maybe then even shorten the spring guides a little bit to extend the compression stroke too.
Just keep away from cavitation on compression and I'm sure it will be O.K. with the rubber hose top out bumpers. And if not; the brake line will hopefully keep the fork lower tubes from getting left behind in the jumps. regards

i was about to say i'm back riding but i now have to send yet again mystator down to cyprus..... so i'm stuck again! however i get 2 old stators next week and that brings me up to 5. sparks has found one so i'm doubled to 6 and should always have a good stator available pretty soon. business has had to come first!

anyway, i have changed the valving in the forks again and this is what i have nowadays
.48 springs for a 220pound 15 stones rider.
5W oil
115mm air gap
5mm packing of which only 2mm is preload
measurements are: 306mm wheels free, 260mm standing and 243mm w/ rider so sags are 46mm and 63mm
compression and rebound are 15 out.
float on the ZP3 MV is 1.0mm
i have the deep bottoming cones drilled.

now the valving:
24, 24 (added), 14, 24, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16 (17 removed), 15, 11, [email protected]
MV the same at 23, 23, 22, 20, 18, 16, 14.
rebound; same old same old.

i'm doing this to drag it back towards lew's wishes however, i get the feeling that with .48s i should lay off the 24s for that initial plushness and go heavy on the 20-14 area. the 48s can be spikey enough without too many 24s on there. lew wants a third 24 starter but i'll see how this goes.

i sit here with all the gear (and no idea...) to do my own rear shock. i've had it nearly 2 years now from drehwurm in austria. one day i'll be brave.....!

regards

Taffy

yeah well smorgy,its not quite that easy to get max travel out of the forks.shorten the spring guide will give you extra travel,but not just by itself.the dust seal hits the fork leg bottom.top of the fork leg needs to be trimmed off & re-threaded.this brings the tubes up further.you then need to machine up a new mv/ rebound tap that is longer so it goes down as far as possible.thats one way of doing it.far bit of jiggling around to get that extra 10-15mm.too hard this is easy.

yeah taffy i have to get a few more browny points before i can get that stator.just gota try & butter her up a bit more first.
don't really know what the differences are in our forks or how you have 306mm of travel,cause mine only had 295mm.
when i have 27mm of packing that equals 0mm preload,this is because of the extended fork travel.i tried running 0mm preload in both forks with .48 springs & it still sags too much.all the extra fork travel gets eaten up in sag.
atm i have a .48 in one leg & a .44 in the other.like you i think it was spiking too much over the say sharp 200mm bumps with a .48 in both legs,having the alloy tank which brings the weight further back as well as the under seat fuel cell,also made the situation worse.
my next try is 0mm preload on the .48 & 5mm on the .44,this makes 57mm stat & race 75mm on mine.
i'll just try different packing on the .044 spring to get the bike sitting how i like it(get it turning good through corners).keeping 0 preload on the .48 spring might get it to come in a little softer.
just a few thoughts thats been ticking over.
..weed..

the 306mm is for measuring not for distance travelled weed.

regards

Taffy

well I'm fatter! I'm older! but I'm back! rode for the first time yesterday in 15 Months. man was I happy just to BE there! I went to Swaffham and left everything alone as I died in the summer heat.

Hope to be out again next Sunday at East Tracks near kings Lynn and may consider swapping a few bits 'n bobs. This week the bike was so sweet it was like velvet in the woods which quite frankly is where I have always done 80% of my testing. phuq does it go over rollers, I can go absolutely flat out! how many people can say that?

I think I'll try and work towards a few things and see if they come off.

the first is more dip under braking and the fact that i consider i lost the front end too easily last week.

so tyre pressures up and down from 10PSI (I use Maxxis MH compound)
possible raise the forks and take the sag to it's lowest numbers (arse up)
then I'll have to look at the free bleeds and then the float value.

I have Lew and ZP3 on 0.8-1.0mm and others on 1,4mm. I still think the 48 is just about there but the free bleeds have made the soft stuff real easy and now I need to somehow get the bike stopping the forks in a controlled manner EARLIER AND SOONER.

regards

Taffy

perhaps its time Taffy to look as well at the shock and try that nice gear from Drehwurm

Taffy said:

well I'm fatter! I'm older! but I'm back! rode for the first time yesterday in 15 Months. man was I happy just to BE there! I went to Swaffham and left everything alone as I died in the summer heat.

Taffy

Click to expand...

How come you have not had a ride in 15 months Taf?
When you got us all excited about your 10,000 posts, you didn't mention the bit that 9,000 of them were replies in the one post :lol: :lol:


And Bushie! Page 18 before you chirped in on a suspension post. 8O :lol: :lol:

actually I'd never ridden a husaberg till the weekend. nice bike.....might get one!

regards

Taffy

I'm afraid I have forgotten most of the info from ktmtalk but I want to know why some folk get away with 5 midvalve shims and others have 11?

my latest sags are 653/625/555 rear for 28/98 and on the front it's 311/263/235 for 48/76 which is getting nearer to what people 'normally' expect. interesting to see how the springs have sagged even while the bike sits still!

this is what I have
BV; 24, 24, 14, 24, 24, 22, 20, 18, 16, 15, 12, 11, [email protected]
MV: 23, 23, 20, 18, 16, 14.
I have drilled the bottom pistons across every second wall with 1mm drill bit
35mm top out springs
deeper bottoming cones drilled twice
just 2mm of preload on 48s front. reb=15 out and comp=15 out. 5W oil with a 1115mm air gap.

she's lovely and plush now at the bottom, front end is JUST about neutral entering corners and I've certainly stopped riding over the berms.

I'm using all the travel up bar 8mm of which 5mm you can't use and all this on a woods track with rollers.

I figure if I go back to 120 air gap then she'll cannon out the bottom. so i need to find more stopping (HS comp damping) power and to keep it low in the stroke entering a corner, certainly no higher.

I'm keeping the 1.0mm float and will try an extra 24 on the piston face as lew suggests. I already have a 22 more then he in there and a 12 and 11 for HS as well. so there should be enough there soon.

regards

Taffy

sounds like the biggest issue is cornering behaviour..... for the most part once the forks are about right thats where twiddling the shock shims becomes most useful.

don't ask me what to do to it though I never did much to the WP shock.

in the forks for added long stroke HS bottoming resistance you could try a lift limiting setup on the BV

Ok

for LAST sunday - when I went to east trax with arkley123 - I added a third 24 to the BV stack on the secondary stack (sorry I've forgotten the correct term) so it was
24, 24, 14, 24, 24, and a 24 again, 22, 20, 18, 16, 15, 12, 11, [email protected].

I added 5 clicks to the comp damping and then again another 5, it always bottomed out over table tops which neither surprises or worries me too much but the action was nice. couldn't feel anything 'harsh' whatsoever through the bars until i got to the comp being just 5 out - then i could start to feel it. I also added 5 to the front rebound. the forks went from protruding 5mm to 10mm. again no real 'dip' but for the first time the front didn't feel high. grip was of a premium but i was no worse than others for once.

however, the bike had to be forced to turn right in some long 180's, I had the heel of my left hand pushing hard!

on the rear I went to 20 clicks rebound as I think it's coming to the end of it's present life....


so i decided after this that i needed more comp shims, probably on the MV and a base one at that as I'm still a long way off. so a 13mm base shim was installed. I also went for only 110mm air gap. with the extra shim in, the MV float became .95mm.

I also figured that it's still a problem to get the bike to drop into a corner - i'm not too bad now but I have to be so careful not to roll over a berm.

so by trying my set of 16/18 offset yokes, because they are a candy red that's faded (I can't say the colour... 8O ) I painted them black and fitted them. I decided on the 18mm offset. I also put the forks back to just the caps protruding. the idea being that the wider arc of the wheel turning off the centre line would make it 'drop in'. added to this I hoped to get the double bonus of more weight on the front so more grip!

testing today then, the MV was now 23, 23, 20, 18, 16, 14, and a 13. 110 air gap. float down to 0.95 from 1.0mm.

just the opposite of last sunday's hard pack sand, I was back at swaffham's enduro circuit and boy had there been some rain! after a few hours of trying to cut a line through the gloop we started to get there. couldn't say the handling was better but I started to feel just a little of the LS and HS bumps through the bars. I never touched a clicker all day - i just rode!

one thing I did notice was the extra grip i started to get when i really leaned on the front tyre. I fully expected to have to dab but it never happened! I seemed to find lots of extra grip when stood up and on the flick-backs????

so for now the yokes stay. possibly might increase the air gap on the forks to see if its the MV that stopped the last 20mm being used or the new valving? obvious tests are to let these forks up through the yokes by 5mm or 10mm? I would have liked some extra slow/LS rebound damping as this is different to the HS stuff that's good.

Most of my work will have to soon centre on the rear shock as it's getting old.

regards

Taffy

i had forgot to post that i had a rubber topout failure a few months ago.
just updating what i have put in there instead.
must be a fair bit of oil pressure in there to peel the hose in half.
i pulled the other fork appart & the hose was perfect,don't know why the difference.maybe when the edge just starts to peel back it doesn't take long to shread it? dunno,but i just replaced both with alloy topouts.
they have been in there for a few months now &i can't notice any clanging when they top out,so..so far so good.
i'm only running 2-3mm of preload so its never going spring back too hard.
..weed..

completely different set-up to mine mate. looks like a bit of gardening hose!

the nice thing about the longer top-out springs is that even with hardly any pre-load you don't get the 'twanging' = everything is fitting nicely in order.

regards

Taffy

great pics weed!

I use 12mm long topouts but i could remove them as I run zero prelaod on the main springs

like you said: nothing to push the wheel out. if the rebound is well damped for HS the velocity at full extension is almost allways near zero.

with 6mm preload or so you need topouts to deal with the main spring force at full extension

the thing is you also recieve this force every time the wheel kisses the ground.

I like your ally ones Weed, as they enter the bottoming cone from the underside they should/could provide hydraulic top out damping.

the idea of "reactive" topouts where huge great long toput springs are used seems not to be popular anymore.. not sure of the real world benefits, it seems like perhaps they could be used to help poor rebound damping.

bushie

ever seen it where the slow rebound can be done alone? I guess my settings are shyte :cry: :cry: :cry:

regards

Taffy

i must admit taffy,i was reluctant to go shorter than the original early model top outs,cause they are short to start with,but i'm glad i did try it.now i know ,that shorter top out the better in my opinion.its just a waste of suspension travel having long top outs.
by the way, it was 9/16 hydraulic hose.
ha ha...good one..garden hose..ha ha
oooohh..altogether now boys...
"i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok"... . ."i'm a lumberjack and i'm ok"
...garden hose....for phuck sake :roll:

so what do you do with the gap? my long top-outs mean that one plastic spacer and I have the right pre-load?

hose pipe? how silly of me! you've had a "hosepipe ban" in australia for years! :twisted: :twisted:

regards

taffy

check that the springs can handle the extra travel first and then fill up the gap with spacers

if you have say 6mm prelaod and you make the topout 6mm shorter your ride height will be the same because youve just added travel at the top......