Wind Up

[fred_savage]

Atention heavy riders! This is not a question for those built like a Flamenco dancer.................

My forks, (poor things), on a 07 270 purchased 2nd hand from a much smaller rider, tend to dive at the bottom of decents. I was advised not to wind the pre loader in to far as it would make the front wheel push out on tight slippery turn. Can some one on the heavy side give me a guide as to how far down in mm's they have wound their LHS fork pre loader without a detremental effect on steering. The number of clicks out from all the way in on the RHS would also be useful.

Thanks.

[neils on wheels]

Fred,

The thing to do is to set the suspension sag on both the front & rear of the bike.

To do this measure the unloaded ride height by lifting both wheels off the ground, using a stand under the sump. You can measure from the wheel spindle to a fixed point, say the rear mudguard or silencer bracket at the rear; along the fork slider at the front. Do recognise that one of these is likely to be a vertical measure, the other is measured along the angle of the fork leg, so is a reduced vertical height.

Then stand on the bike and get someone to repeat the measurements. You should aim for around 30% (plus or minus a bit) of the suspension travel to be taken up by your static body weight. So if you have 170mm travel forks, you want about 54mm of suspension sag. This is a decent starting point, you also want to make sure that the front & back have equal sag so as to keep the geometry balanced.

Similarly you want to set damping so that both front & back of the bike compress & return at the same rate when you apply a load to the centre of the bike, say through the pegs or the seat.

Use these measures as a starting point then make minor tweaks if you feel the need.

[bikespace]

You could always go for a slightly heavier weight fork oil as well... will slow the compression down.

Was going to mention that, I'll have to have a dig in the garage to see what I used, but I uprated mine last time I replaced my fork seals.

This could be totally wrong (I need to have a hunt around), but on my lads bike I seem to remember mixing 5 and 10 wt oil, but on mine I went with the full 10 wt oil, and it did slow the action down a little.

I've got other questions to ask, but I won't detract from the thread until Fred's got some more answers.

[madmostin]

Hi there.

After having suspension revalved and resprung on my GasGas Ec250 i started thinking about suspension on my Beta 4t. Not that there is anything wrong with it. I figured i was outside Mr Beta's target weight being 93kg so asked the helpful fellows at Beta uk about heavier springs. They do list a heavier front spring and at

[fred_savage]

Plenty of detailed advice offered and gratefully received, I