| Author | Message | ||
     Harold |
I used to have a 98 SW1-for 6 years, so I know what a good fork should be like. My son bought a GS500 Suzuki, which will not run on rice, but is good for a beginners bike. Anyway, when we bought it, the forks were terrible, and bottomed out just looking at them or driving out of the seller’s driveway. I have now put 20W oil and Progressive springs. There is a GS500 forum that I have asked this same question, but no one seems to answer, so I came back to my roots. These piece of crap forks have 4.7 inches of travel. I have read that too much oil makes your forks get too stiff. I put a zip tie around the leg, and have 1-1/4” of static drop while sitting on it-210 lbs. Driving it over bumps and such I only get 1/2” more travel than trying to push it down sitting still with the front brake on. However, I still had 1” of the 4.7” of travel left. I don’t think that you ever want your forks to bottom out, unless you are hitting a SUV. Does this amount of travel sound reasonable, or should I take out more oil? How much of your forks travel should you be able to get by just bouncing the forks with the brake on? | ||
| Spiderman |
no matter how much travel you only want to have 1 to 1.5 inches of sag. as for bottoming out you will need to find the shocks/forks gross vehicle weight... | ||
| Crashm1 |
I would check on a racer site or check with Traxxion Dynamics. The GS is a pretty common racebike so there should be folks who know how to get the most out of one. I suspect your biggest problem is going to be the valving inside the fork followed closely by flex. The valving is going to require a professional but a fork brace should be easy to find. Of course then you will need to upgrade the rear shock too, then get it some more horse power and better brakes. Pretty soon you'll have a race bike. Maybe just get it as good as you can by doing all the maintenance that the last owners skipped and fix the broken stuff and take a track day or three to find the limits of the bike. It would be a warm fuzzy bonding kinda thing, plus he would get to find out what riding fast is in a safe enviroment. Might keep him from trying to race on the street. |
