upgrading forks, lengthening swingarm

[Beemerboff]

I havent fitted them yet , as the weather has been just perfect for trail riding and I havent wanted to pull the thing apart and leave myself without a trail bike.
Here in Oz we dont have these long European winters to pull the bikes apart so modifications are done in riding time.

However the weather is starting to warm up and the trails are getting dry ,loose and dusty and I've just put my R75/7 road bike back on the road , so I will probably make a start this week, just after I fit a set of brake linings and CV joint boot on Nissan NXR , and find out where the trans fluid is leaking from, and ------.

The eventual intention is to get get rid of the entire tubular faring thing on the front and fit a handlebar mounted faring and electronic instruments, but I'm getting old and everything seems to take so much longer.

I had been hoping to get the bits for the faring etc on Ebay but I am coming to the conclusion that everything will have to be bought new, and as Germany seems to be the source of most GS bits I am going to brush up on mt German , or get the nice people at BMW Boxer Supplies to get the bits in for me .

 

[Beemerboff]

Just back from a run with the new inserts finally fitted - the alternator rotor failed so I had the chance to give the GS a full service and fit the bits which were waiting to be fitted.

And I wasn't meant to ride for a week after a little operation either .

The fork inserts are magic , worth every cent and probably make a bigger difference than the Ohlins did to the rear .

Fitting was easy.

I had a pair og fork boots to fit anyway so after slackening the top and bottom bolts /cap on the bike I removed the complete leg, then the fork slider and the circlip in the bottom of the stanchion and the complete damper with it.

The new assembly and cap just fits right in , the bottom bolt is replaced and apart from adding oiland slackening the bleed screw that is it.

The leg can be fed back up through the yokes with the cap on.I marked them so they went back in exactly the same line and carefully levelled the spindle so it spun easily, before tightening the clamp bolts.I spent a bit time aligning the fender bracket too, so there was no change in stiction before and after it was fitted.

The new springs feel stiffer than OEM at standstill and rebound was stiffer too, with both compression and rebound damping set at position 9 of 17, ie in the middle.

The bike sits a little higher too.

However , on the road the front feels more supple , and better damped .

I set out for a particularly bumpy/ corrugated road to do some fine tuning , but didnt really need to , the bike just floated along .

The adjusters can be twiddled while you are riding , and a couple less clicks of compression made things slightly better.

I then headed for some high speed sweepers which have sharp bumps (tree roots) followed by undulations which used to set up an uneasy pitching if I hit them wrong .

A big improvement here too, didnt hit the bumps as hard and almost no pitching on landing either, and even better after I added a a couple of clicks of rebound damping.

Still a bit of off road tuning to go, but I'll wait until the week is up.

So , it appears that the guys who recommend stiffer springs and thicker oil in the rebound side than the compression side are on the right track - I have ended up 7 clicks of compression up from minimum and 11 of rebound .