A couple of "thanks"...

[Dangerous Dave]

I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone here how helpful this forum and its' members are. But I'd like to thank two people in particular who've gone out of their way to make the wife and I much happier with our FJR.

One being Garauld, who made me one of his excellent backrests, then modified it at my request, to my specs...basically for no extra charge, just to make sure I was totally happy with it...even though he already had my money! It looks great and the wife and I are both really pleased with it!

The other would be Sportryder, who went so far out of his way for me, to help me get suspension I was really happy with...well, it's unbelievable. He went to great lengths to fix my forks that Racetech totally screwed up. When he told me what he found on disassembly of the forks, it's just mind boggling. The forks came back set up nearly spot-on perfect. I just added a touch of preload and a couple clicks less compression damping and they were/are awesome! I'm still fiddling with the Penske shock to get it tweaked just right, but the weather here has been too miserable to get much "quality time" with the FJR.

Anyway, both these guys have been incredibly helpful. I'm pretty sure neither one of them has gotten wealthy off of me, so apparently they're just good guys purely for the warm and fuzzy of it. Courtesy has become such a rarity these days that I always like to acknowledge it when it's bestowed upon me. Guys like these make the world waaaay more pleasant to be in. Thanks guys.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Bumpity-bump

 

[throttlejockeyTJ]

Nice Testimonial! :yahoo:

 

[FJRMGM]

sorry - but this forum specializes in complaints, not compliments so your membership is hereby revoked.

On the serious side - there are some folks still around who help us restore our faith in our fellow man. Sounds like you ran into two of them.

 

[Mike-H]

Glad to see your happy....now 2 people helped you out so pass it on & help two people out....who knows it might just catch on???

 

[sportryder]

Thank you for the kind words Dave. I'm glad you are happy with your upgraded suspension.

 

[zzkenoman]

Thank you for the kind words Dave. I'm glad you are happy with your upgraded suspension.

what exactly did you find screwed up?

 

[Dangerous Dave]

Thank you for the kind words Dave. I'm glad you are happy with your upgraded suspension.

Very happy. It's taken me awhile to get the shock dialed in, but that was my fault (and the weather's), not the fault of the shock. I broke the cardinal rule of suspension tuning...that being that I changed more than one adjuster at a time. REALLY bad idea...it just confuses things and should be done by "professional" suspension tuners only. I don't fit in that category. After fiddling endlessly and getting nowhere, I went back to square one...reset sag, and started over. Now we're making real progress! It's darn near perfect now, but I'll probably do a little more tweaking once I get the wife and a load of luggage on it this weekend. We've ridden two-up on it, but not with loaded luggage. Shouldn't require much more tweaking. The wife's butt-0-meter gives the Penske two thumbs up. The adjustments on that Penske are ridiculously easy to make. I was beginning to think maybe I should have gone with a heavier spring, but now that I'm getting it dialed in, I think your recommendation was spot on. The forks were just about perfect right out of the box. A couple clicks and a couple turns and I haven't touched it since.

The Wilber's shock was obviously a quality piece (I had it in my hands...it was beautiful), but this Penske is so much more shock for the same money. I would have to recommend to Warchild that next time he wants to put together a G/B on suspension stuff that he talk to you to see what you can do through Traxxion before going back to the Wilber's stuff again. For the price of the basic Wilber's emulsion shock with ride height, remote preload, and rebound adjustment only, I got a Penske with remote reservoir (non-emulsion), ride height, compression and rebound damping adjustments, and the slickest non-remote preload adjuster I've ever seen. I haven't changed the ride height yet, but every other adjustment on this shock takes just SECONDS...including preload. Can't wait to take it to the mountains next weekend. It oughta be good.

Thanks again Lee.

what exactly did you find screwed up?

I'll let the technician field that one. Basically, they threw them together as quickly and cheaply as they could and shipped them back to me. They were awful to ride on.

Lee??

 

[sportryder]

I'll let the technician field that one. Basically, they threw them together as quickly and cheaply as they could and shipped them back to me. They were awful to ride on.Lee??

Well, the preload adjuster was damaged (rounded off) on one of the fork legs. Both metal washers that are installed between the upper bushing and fork seal were severly conical shaped. They hadn't bothered to flatten them out or replace them. Every FZ1 and FJR fork I have disassembled show those washers deformed from the factory during the initial installation. Some worse than others. They should be replaced or flattened out as the minimum. I believe the bushings, washers and seals are installed by machines at the Soqi factory and there is too much force used during the process. They probably should evaluate their machine tolerances for that process. I do not believe they get that way during disassembly. However, if you do not flatten or replace them, they will not have a good interference fit on the next disassembly. What happens then is the lower bushing slips through the upper bushing and will cause the seal and bushings to become damaged. This is exactly what occured when we disassembled the forks for the full inspection.

The fork springs used were the incorrect size for the application. They were also using far too soft of a spring rate. They used their .95 springs that tested at .92 kg/mm. A couple of these issues are opinions only but for a 600 + lb bike that carries a lot of weight forward, those springs cannot prevent bottoming and provide good sag numbers when using them. In order to prevent bottoming with them, you'd need to use more compression damping. When doing that, you'd inhibit bump absorbtion. To compound the problem, the springs were bowing because of their small OD. The springs they installed were 37x315 mm. In a fork tube that has a 48 mm OD, the minimum standard spring size used should be at least 40 mm OD unless a "buffer" of some sort was used to prevent the spring from bowing. When a spring bows very much, the rate becomes softer than it's manufactured spec.

That about sums it up.

We did a couple of things extra to further improve the bump compliance and extend the "usable" fork travel.

BTW, your custom fork stickers gave our lead tech and Max a real hoot. They loved them.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

That about sums it up.
We did a couple of things extra to further improve the bump compliance and extend the "usable" fork travel.

You forgot about the extremely limited range of adjustment they had set up the gold valves with.

BTW, your custom fork stickers gave our lead tech and Max a real hoot. They loved them.

Yeah, they make me giggle every time I look at them.

Remember, advertising pays off!

 

[sportryder]

You forgot about the extremely limited range of adjustment they had set up the gold valves with.

Yep, I completely forgot about that. Since they changed needles and used their own, the rebound adjuster rod was too long and needed to be shortened a mm or so.