Topic: Suspension mods: Forks

[GroovieGhoulie]

A few questions about suspension upgrades.

I'm planning my Cafe bike and a huge part of that is upgrading the suspension.  The rears seem simple in that companies offer matched shock/spring sets, and you choose the setup you want and they pretty much bolt right up.

But what about the forks?  Are there any drop-in upgrade kits offered for them or do they have to be "re-engineered" at home?

Dropping a new spring into the forks is probably easy, but how is the damping changed?  Re-valving?  Drilling more/bigger holes in the tubes?

Also, a question about 750 forks:  I recently came into a deal on a K0 rolling chassis and I'm going to save it to use for my 750 cafe, (the 400 cafe comes first).  I'm not going to be able to put eyes-on for a while, but from the pics, I'm assuming it has the original K0 forks.  Are the early forks harder to rebuild or modify than the later forks?  What are the differences in the K0 forks and the later K forks, if any?

Thanks!

[eldar]

well you can change dampening by using different oil weights. lighter weights mean faster dampening but less dampening. heavier is the opposite.

[Jinxracing]

Forking by Frank told me that the early forks use a snap ring arrangement to hold the internals, while the later types differ. There are possibly other differences as well...I'm sure some of the experts here can shed some light.

If you're thinking about doing some experimental mods and don't want to bugger up the pieces you already have, I have a complete set of early (8/70) fork internals sitting in my shop that I'd be happy to part with cheap. PM me if interested.

[cafe75-550]

Progressive suspension makes fork springs for the front, the ones on my 550 were a drop-in operation (no mods needed) and improved the handling quite a bit...