Fork travel question

[kick]

According to my owners manual maximum fork travel is 5.9 inches. I installed race tech 1.0's and raised my forks 15mm and then measured the distance between the bottom of the lower triple clamp and the top of the fork wiper and I get about 5.5". I was gonna install fork boots but they only compress down to about 2" so if they were installed and the forks compressed 4" it would appear that they would be crushed some. If the forks needed to bottom out at the full 5.9" the fork boots would be crushed or the top of the fork wipers would hit the bottom of the lower triple clamp.

So I guess the question is: since so many of you have raised the forks, are any experiencing problems with bottoming out or do they just not really compress that far in real world conditions?.

[turboderek]

you can't see all of the fork travel and some of it is taken up by the weight of the bike.

[kick]

The bike is off the ground being farkled so the forks are fully extended with approx 6" between the bottom of the triple clamp to the top of the lower fork tube.

What I want to know is this: Has anyone who has raised the forks had an issue with the forks bottoming out after a hard hit (wheelie, pot-hole, off-road stuff) to the point where the dust wiper has been damaged from hitting the triple clamp? Because, in theory, with 5.9" of travel available the forks could compress that far.

[AceRider]

I have a DL650 with ABS (08) and i have installed Superbrace

I have disassemble the fork to put different springs and emulator in. I measured the travel whilst the bike is jacked up and fork cap and springs out to see if anything would hit.

the following are my observation

1) the actual travel available (taken into account the "negative" travel by weight of wheel acting on top out springs) is approx 143mm or 5.6 inch - i dont know where suzuki hide the last 7mm. measured top out spring travel due to weight of wheel is about 5mm

2) The wiper will hit the triple clamp if you lower by more than about 15mm at some point.

3) because the oil lock out piece in at the bottom of fork, the last 10-20mm of travel is effectively impossible to get to. That probably explains why some people can lower 25mm and get away with it.

4) IF YOU HAVE SUPERBRACE or KB FORKBRACE AND HAS ABS, the brake distribution block / brake hose will hit the superbrace before the fork wiper hits the triple clamp.

5) my solution to 4) above is a) lower by no more than 10mm and b) turn the turn the brake banjo joint anticlockwise by 30 degree for about 2-3mm clearance

6) use a zip tie to measure actual fork travel. If you are not getting to the last 20 mm of measured actual available travel when braking very hard over small bump, then you should change the air gap to allow greater use of available travel. The last 20mm is quite impossible to get to because of the standard oil lock piece and is really whatever shit we havent anticipated that can happen out there!

7) the effective usable travel on everyday ride is only about 117mm (and not 150mm) on the compression side after taking into account the negative travel caused by the top out springs!!!!!


someone may want to chime on this observation