Introducing Thumper

[madbikeboy]

[QUOTE=javawocky;1129190658] I took about 15mm off the front. Mate of mine suggested I put a small cable tie on the forks as a marker to see how far they are traveling. When I lowered them I noticed a mark where they haven't traveled past in what may be a while. Hope I haven't taken too much off - will have to check what happens when I replace my front brake pads this weekend and start applying some harder riding.


[QUOTE]

15mm is a significant amount of fork to drop the yokes by. Be aware that by doing this, the steering head angle increases in steepness, the front may turn in faster, and may border on unstable if pushed.

If you need to lower the bike, suggest you PM Robert Taylor - he can give you the correct way of doing this.

On my GSXR1000, 6mm makes a REALLY big difference...

[javawocky]

Right, report back time.

Last weekend I took Thumper around some round abouts concentrating on leaning her over and checking how she reacts. Obviously it was low speed stuff, but from that I found not so nice handling ill which was predicted here by wiser bikers. Sure enough, it was fun to learn her over, but if there was the slightest bump the bike tended to oscillate (wobble ) a little when it hit a bump. Quite weird if you ask me! So I decided its probably a good thing to raise the front again at some point.

This week I took the cage in for brakes and the wife wasn't too keen on driving the evil RG in to work, so I gave her a lift on thumper in the rain at 6:15am. When I got to work I noticed a burning plastic smell so I investigated. It was coming from the radiator - sure enough the plastic protector grill was touching the radiator in the middle and melting! Yep, the front wheel has been coming right up and pushing the plastic back because the forks were too low - luckily it doesn't seam to have damaged the radiator - so yesterday I quickly pulled the forks up to about 5mm. Form the short ride I took handling seamed better, but its early days yet.

Anyway, moral of the story - don't drop your SV's forks too low - I recon 10mm is a maximum.

madbikeboy - I did contact the dude you recommended but sounds like he does Ohlin replacements which are a little pricey for me at this stage. I have heard of a guy who fabricates suspension linkages to lower bikes, I might try to get hold of him to see if they can do it for a reasonable buck.

For the moment its like riding my old MX bike tall in the saddle.