Because I am tubby...

[markjackson]

I have never (since owning a pink Gilera Nordwest in about 1994) experienced forks as awful as those on my HP2e.

Their lack of brilliance was not unexpected, having read so many posts on the subject, but the level of awfulness was still a surprise. When fitted with supermoto wheels it was even worse,

A friend's KTM 950 Adventure shows that big tall bikes can work without a tele lever, when sprung and damped well and using WP forks so I snapped up the first pair of cheap ones he found me, just in case.

But...

I didn't want to give up on the standard forks without trying some basics, so tried 7.5 wt then 10wt in each leg, and played around between min and max damping settings...

Still far too saggy and confidence sapping, but I must confess to being quite well built, having a big petrol tank, oh... and I'm very fat!

I've had very productive results in the past by changing fork or shock springs to suit my 110kg, and they are sufficiently cheap to make it a sensible experiment before embarking on the WP conversion, so I ordered some 55kg/mm average rate progressive springs, and on removing the 'originals' found these were the same, so that didn't help.

Not to be beaten I took my existing springs to the local suspension guru (for him to measure etc) and he said they would be about right for my little trail bike, but miles off for a tubby fella, wanting a compromise between fast road/track SM wheels and Trailling on knobblies on the HP2 and recommended...

0.94kg/mm springs!

This is loads more than a 950ADV but about the same as a Superduke.

They havn't arrived yet, but I'm thinking I may use two of these for SM wheels and one new/one old (i.e average 72kg/mm) for the trail wheels.

So... Who has the highest fork spring weight and how heavy are you?

 

[litelfun]

I put wilbers in mine aboute 6 years ago been great ever since I cant rember of the top of my head what oil I put in 7,5 I think I used to put 115psi in the back schock and i was quite happy with the set up I have a custom buite Ohlins now with a heavyer spring in I preferd the air schock my self , I am any thing between 92 and 100 kg and the wife is 40 kg and it was fine I took a girl on the back once hu had so 65 kg that was no fun then !!! if you use the sm wheels a lot I have a brembo 4 poter thier that really doese improve the bracking and works ok on the standard master cyclinder try putting 115 psi in your rear schock its not possiblel at at a lot of garages so you will proberly have to use your hand pump to get it up to that ! ok good luck with your set up and keep us posted

 

[markjackson]

Cheers Fella,

I've got a wilbers on the back too, but the forks were the most noticable problem on both 21" front karoo knobblies and SM wheels.

I've been out today on nomal (but cold) rods and muddy potholed tarmac'd farm tracks with a 0.95kg/mm spring in one fork and a 0.55kg/mm spring in the other. So I guess a 0.75kg/mm set-up.

I now have 10wt oil in both forks but full rebound screw and very little compression on the other one.

Not great theory, but in practice it is certainly the best fork set-up yet.

 

[litelfun]

well only pratice mackes perfechtion its a wierd set up everry uther macke of forks have the same settings on each leg just thies are diferent I dont under stand why they just have on one leg I am shure I screwed mine right aut thats proberly why I havent had eny fork problems but they have been ok my bicke i have only ever had the sm rims on for 40.000 kms now bracking is good with the 4 or 6 poter the standard set up brackes they are proberly good for off road but shit for on tarmack espacly if your doing high speeds but the bicke is at the end of the day built for off roade use I supose its just shocking how they can fit the front forks on a bicke of this class !!