Giving height to my bandit

[speeding_ant]

Hey Guys,

Havnt been on in the last little while but I thought I ask you all a qustion

I need to heighten my bandit 250. It has been lowered from the previous owner so the bike is very low. It has adjustable back suspension, not sure what you can do with the front but it seems to be quite "low". Could anyone with experience in suspension give me a helping hand in raising the bike again?

you guys...

[xwhatsit]

The didn't do anything obvious, like dropping the forks up through the triple clamps? Just a thought, I did that on my bike to sharpen up the front end, and it is noticeably more lower now as a side-effect.

[speeding_ant]

The didn't do anything obvious, like dropping the forks up through the triple clamps? Just a thought, I did that on my bike to sharpen up the front end, and it is noticeably more lower now as a side-effect.

Actually it seems it is using a different fork set. Looks like they used the forks from a 92 bandit, making the amount of travel available a lot less.. Either way, the back is far too low for me (80kgs) and needs to be heightened. Any ideas?

[erik]

Are you sure 92 bandit forks are shorter than 2000 ones?

Tie a cable tie around one of the forks and push it down to the dust seal, then get on the bike and sit on it so that the suspension compresses (use a wall or something to help balance and try to balance exactly vertical so your full weight is on the bike). Then carefully get off so that you don't suddenly push the front suspension down further than it was with you just sitting on the bike. Measure where the cable tie is relative to the tripple clamps. Then get someone to help tip the bike on it's sidestand (I don't think bandit 250's have centrestands?) so that the front wheel is off the ground, then measure how far the top edge of the fork seal is from the tripple clamps (or from the cable tie if it hasn't moved since sitting on the bike). The distance from the laden position (with you on the bike) and the fully extended position should be about 30% of the full suspension travel (which I'm guessing is about 110mm for the bandit?) so approximately 30-35mm. If it's sagging more than that, you need to increase the preload in the forks. That'll raise the front a bit. The other thing is the tripple clamps might've been slid down the forks a bit to lower it, it'd be easy to see if they had.

The rear might've just had the preload on the shock turned all the way down, if so, see if your bike has a toolkit (possibly under the rear seat?) with an adjuster for the rear shock. If not, you'll have to find some other way to increase the rear preload which will raise the bike also. If the dog bones (part of the rear suspension linkage between the swing arm and the lever the shock connects to) have been lengthened, you'd have to get shorter dog bones to raise the bike. Or a longer rear shock if you can find one that fits.