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gheto fork mods

2K views 11 replies 7 participants last post by  Bazooka Joe 
#1 ·
Hi guys, was thinking on trying some old school method from my DR days.
Adding a longer spacer and some more oil to the fork?
will it do any good?
i'm ~260 Lbs so the fork is relay soft for me.
being OUS means that all the nice stuff you guys can get for the forks is always double the price for me

Thanks
Eran
 
#3 ·
#4 ·
Adding a spacer add preload to the existing spring. Thicker oil adds dampening. More oil lessens the air chamber and increases the chance of hydrolock. None of the above increase the spring rate.

Cheap works arounds usually garner mediocre results. Trust me this is coming from a guy about your size and take no offense. Why not do the cheapest and best thing for yourself and try to lose 20, 30 or 40 pounds?
 
#5 ·
And with the money you saved from not eating as much spend $100 on a set of springs and get it right.
 
#6 ·
According to the OP that $100 spring set would cost him closer to $200. For all we know spending $100 let alone $200 may not be doable. We also don't know anything about his physique so losing a bunch of weight may not be an option. And even if it is maybe he wants to ride his bike while he waits for that much of a weight reduction to be safely accomplished.
 
#9 ·
You can certainly increase spring pre-load in your front forks with the addition of washers/spacer, but the downside of that is that you lose some fork travel due to early spring coil bind. Using thicker oil will decrease your initial compression travel, but the downside is you will lose bump compliance and fork rebound response, possibly causing "packing" of the front fork under braking during aggressive riding. If you want to improve your suspension performance and compliance, stiffer springs and either the RaceTech Gold valves or the Intiminators are the answer.
 
#10 ·
Intiminators add rudimentary "valving" to the damper rod forks that actually works quite well in comparison to the straight up old out dated by at least 40 years damper rod technology.


But again they will not do anything to improve the spring rate. In my opinion Itiminators are worth the money but are only part of the solution. Springs and the right fork oil also.


Do you have any friends or family in the USA that can buy the component and then thy ship then to you? I shipped a cast iron skillet to Singapore and I thought $45 was ridiculous. I can't imagine it really costing $144 to ship a 1 pound package of Intiminntors to Israel. Heck it might be worth a plane ticket to fly here tour around buy a bunch of stuff and carry it home.
 
#11 ·
Do you have any friends or family in the USA that can buy the component and then thy ship then to you? I shipped a cast iron skillet to Singapore and I thought $45 was ridiculous. I can't imagine it really costing $144 to ship a 1 pound package of Intiminntors to Israel. Heck it might be worth a plane ticket to fly here tour around buy a bunch of stuff and carry it home.
Time to make new friends :wink2:
But yes that what i'll do eventually,either ask someone from work or wait for my wife's uncles to come over in the summer, my plan is to get the Cogent DDC kit
 
#12 ·
I owned an '05 650 and I tuned and tuned on my Race Tech emulators for the longest time. I got them to work pretty good on the compression stroke for what they are- a crude little gizmo. But, remember, the rebound control on the DL650 fork will always be inconsistent because it is a fixed orifice damper rod. What this meant, was the rebound was too fast sometimes, too slow other times, and maybe close to correct other times.

All that said, if I were in your shoes, I would do exactly what I recommended in my earlier post on this thread- increase your spring rate. Cut the springs per the link I provided and reset the preload or buy new springs, take your pick. Simply put, you weigh too much for those stock springs. Adding preload will lift the front, but it's barely a band aid to the real issue. And, as stated above, if you add too much preload, you could potentially coil bind before you bottom the fork and that will be violent. The 650's fork has a bottoming cone system, which adds that increased dampening in the bottom inch or so of travel- and you want to retain that function, so do not coil bind. Also, if you add too much preload, the fork will "top out" at times, which will cause handling problems with bumps in corners.

To deal with the higher rebound forces of the stiffer springs, you will need to either use thicker fork fluid or, weld + drill smaller rebound holes in the damper rods. It's not complicated stuff to do this. As stated by others above, your bike has an old school fork and without dropping a lot of money, there is only so much you can do, but also don't set your expectations too high and you'll be just fine.

Hope this helps.
 
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