2008 Gas Gas 300 Suspension Setup

[niall123]

I have recently bought a 2008 gasser and the suspension is very stiff! does anyone out there know what the factory settings are and also what fork oil should i have in the front, im around 12.5 stone.

There is stickers on the rear shock saying its an ohlins but im not sure as the person i bought it off didnt even tell me that he spent a lot of money on the shock..'a good selling point in my eyes'

any help at all would be greatful cheers

here is a few pictures of the shock what do yous think standard or not?

[laser1]

That is defiantly an Ohlins gold shock - a nice upgrade from the Sachs. You can back off the Spring preload and damping to soften it up. If you do a search, there are several threads on suspension setup for the GG on this forum.

Heres a good suspension article written by Jon Stoodley on the GG USA tech page.

http://www.Gas Gas.com/Pages/Technical/trials-suspension-tips.html

Edited August 15, 2012 by laser1

[sting32]

Stiff rear is adjusted with that big ring which is a nut more or less to adjust the pre-load to the spring, while shock is in bike it is on top of the spring.

front stiffness would be done with springs, or replacing stock spacers, with longer ones (we make our own). springs can be changed in one or both sides to stiffer than stock. what you dont want to do is remove too much from front spacer, in fact I would save that spacer, make new ones shorter by say 1/2 inch, then try it. I wish I could tell you what the stock length of spacer was, maybe the guy you bought it from has original spacer, or maybe JSE can tell us. 1/2 inch makes a lot of difference when you do it to BOTH sides, so start there. you dont want any slack when you re assemble the fork-spring cartridge, be sure. I think 5w might be stock weight oil, I used 5 on rebound, 12 or 15w on compression myself on my 08 raga. I moved to the 2010 raga without any changes though, to springs or weight of oil.

The oil makes huge differences in how fast fork will compress or rebound, then the adjuster on top will make slighter adjustments on (depending on which fork) compression or rebound. I used to like hard compression fast rebound, I set my compression screw all the way in to last click, (closed or clockwise, and more restrictive) and my rebound side is open all the way (turn screw counter clockwise), or at least close to that (which means it is open and les restrictive).

you can experiment with fluids. problem is getting them pumped up after draining and flushing the forks, you need to flush the workings inside that do rebound/compression (clean pretty well).

Edited August 15, 2012 by sting32