R65 GS front fork spacers

[Vincent]

Hi,
I'm looking for front fork spacers to put on top of the springs (motorworks progressive). Would anyone know where I could find some?
They are 25mm diameter I believe. I was advised on a previous post (http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php?297593-R65GS-Front-end) to get spacers 25mm to 50mm long.
When the bike is on its stand, the forks are 82.5cm long (from bottom of the lower leg to top of stanchion). When taking the bike (full tank) off the centre stand they drop by 4cm (forks lengt 78.5cm). With me on the bike (I'm 75kg) they drop by another 2.2cm at 76.3cm which is too much sag.
I'm thinking putting 50mm long ones with 7.5w fork oil. Any thoughts?
Cheers
Vincent

 

[patrick]

I'm sure when I bought some progressive springs they came with spacers that appeared to be lengths of plastic tubing.(2mm - ish wall thickness)
Maybe a length of solid looking water pipe would do it (From a plumbers merchant). You could try different lengths then.

 

[Beemerboff]

What did you do with the original spacers which go with the OEM springs?.

My GS had spacers around 90 mm long, and from the sag you have it sounds like you need something similar.

Most forks have the springs preloaded to just about the length of the thread for the cap, that is, you should just have to compress the spring 4 or 5 mm to start the thread on the cap.

If you have the correct spring that should give around 50/55 mm rider sag on the GS and will work well with a 450 lb spring on the rear.

Some folks, including me, like a bit more rebound damping in the forks and they put 15 wt oil in the RH leg in an attempt to achieve this.

Or they fit HPN inserts, to achieve the same, but they are starting to get hard to find.

 

[Benjamin M]

Or they fit HPN inserts, to achieve the same, but they are starting to get hard to find.

But those are designed to fit the paralever bikes, are they not?

 

[Rob Farmer]

There should be a spacer in the bottom of the forks already. The spring sits on top of it, unfortunately you have to turn the forks upside down to get them out.

The mono forks are identical to the road bikes apart from that spacer.

the motorworks springs are garbage. The springs are wound too tight at the ends preventing you fitting the plastic bushes that should be on there. If you do fit the bushes the springs distort and rub the sides of the fork tubes causing stichion and contaminates your fork oil with metal. If you don't fit the bushes you don't have enough preload. Motorworks want shafting sometimes, they've churned out some shite over the years and never advertised the fact that the parts weren't original.

I'd bin them and buy some proper springs.

The 7.5w oil is a good move though

 

[Vincent]

Thanks for your replies,
When I first got the bike, there were no spacers in the forks so I thought that was normal... I've now fitted 50mm spacers on top of the springs and will have to try it out, maybe get new one as mentionned by Rob if it doesn't work for me. It was quite a job to fit and I don't see how I could possibly fit 90 mm ones... Servicing the bike after a long winter under cover so will let you know in a few days.
Cheers
Vincent

 

[Beemerboff]

Sorry - I thought it was a GS, not a G/S.

The stock springs in my well worn G/S forks work OK, but a SJ billet top triple, Flatracer tubular brace, and Belray 5 wt HVI synthetic suspension fluid improved things a lot.

Biggest problem is getting the correct spring on the back, my cheap eBAY Ohlins has a home made spring cut down from something longer and softer, and it gives me around 65 mm rider sag.
Works much better than the 450 lb one the PO had fitted to the WP which had about 40 mm, but the Ohlins has better damping too.

You can forget about progressive action springs - in the real world there is no progression in the range the springs run at for 99% of the time, which is the middle 99% of their movement.