{"id":18847,"date":"2017-12-11T21:26:18","date_gmt":"2017-12-12T02:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/?p=18847"},"modified":"2019-08-12T09:46:04","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T14:46:04","slug":"dirt-bike-front-suspension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/2017\/12\/dirt-bike-front-suspension\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirt bike front suspension"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;m wrong in thinking this way; but I never put much effort into fine tuning the front suspension on my other bikes. For example, on my 74 Z1, I bought progressive suspension brand front springs, put them in with the pvc spacers&#8230; it was stiffer, so I thought, &#8220;cool, feels good, done&#8221;. I didn&#8217;t technically measure preload. Anything was better than before so it was an improvement and I was happy.<\/p>\n<p>On the dirt bike, I feel like it matters more to attempt to tune the suspension. Ya know&#8230; Jumping shit. Wheelies past friends.<\/p>\n<h2>On my 1979 IT250 here&#8217;s what I did<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Racetech front springs: .43kg stiffness. I weigh 175 on a good day. I said it before but Racetech is great since you can choose different spring rates.<\/li>\n<li>Terry Kit vintage dampening rods. eBay find. Apparently these give you 1&#8243; more of fork travel and make for a more plush ride at high speed on bumps? Can&#8217;t find much info.<\/li>\n<li>I set preload to just under an inch<\/li>\n<li>used 300mm of 20 weight fork oil<\/li>\n<li>new all balls fork seals<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So will these improvements make the IT feel better? Who the fuck knows. I want to see how it feels without doing modern front $200 Racetech emulator cartridges.<\/p>\n<p>Front combined with my beefed up rebuilt YZ250 rear monoshock should be good.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1600.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1249.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1593.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1595.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p><strong>Preload<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So how exactly do you measure preload? It&#8217;s pretty simple. When you screw the top cap on, it&#8217;s how much you are compressing the fork spring. My manual calls for about half inch but I went with just under an inch. Preload below.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1599.jpg\"><\/p>\n<p>Below pic is from Racetech website&#8230; The Terry kit dampening rods had less holes, but the holes were bigger I think? I find the dampening rods the most confusing part.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/3-10-500.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/3-10-500.jpg\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-18852\" height=\"576\" alt=\"3-10-500\" width=\"500\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/img_1251.jpg\" class=\"size-full\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe I&#8217;m wrong in thinking this way; but I never put much effort into fine tuning the front suspension on my other bikes. For example, on my 74 Z1, I bought progressive suspension brand front springs, put them in with the pvc spacers&#8230; it was stiffer, so I thought, &#8220;cool, feels good, done&#8221;. I didn&#8217;t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[156,190],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18847"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21595,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18847\/revisions\/21595"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinonthetank.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}