Thinking of getting a Fenda Extenda + Suspension Upgrade

I recently came upon some posts saying its a good idea to get a fenda extenda for your SV if you ride in the rain at all, something about water shorting out the spark plugs? I was looking at the fenda extenda that Pyramid Plastics makes and was wondering if anyone knows how it attaches to the front fender? Also, I'd like to upgrade the suspension on my SV and I heard replacing the springs and oil in the front forks would do a world of difference as well as be cheaper than fitting on a pair of GSX-R forks. Does anyone have any comments about this proceedure (how easy it is to do?) or what a good brand of springs is? (I think race-tech and ohlins are the two brands I've heard of so far). Oh, and I suppose it would be helpful to mention that I ride a 2006 SV650S.

And while we're at it, any other fenda extendas worth looking at? Is there an official Suzuki item?

[timwilky]

Originally Posted by Maestro

I recently came upon some posts saying its a good idea to get a fenda extenda for your SV if you ride in the rain at all, something about water shorting out the spark plugs? I was looking at the fenda extenda that Pyramid Plastics makes and was wondering if anyone knows how it attaches to the front fender? Also, I'd like to upgrade the suspension on my SV and I heard replacing the springs and oil in the front forks would do a world of difference as well as be cheaper than fitting on a pair of GSX-R forks. Does anyone have any comments about this proceedure (how easy it is to do?) or what a good brand of springs is? (I think race-tech and ohlins are the two brands I've heard of so far). Oh, and I suppose it would be helpful to mention that I ride a 2006 SV650S.

Well the way the fender extender is supposed to fit is with an adhesive pad and a couple of screws through your fender. When I did mine. I placed the extender against the underside of my fender and drew round it with a felt tip. This gave me an area to abrade, I then used expoy resin to glue the extender in place with no nasty holes or screws. I used 3 small g clamps to hold it until it cured.

As for springs and oil. yup even a quick £100 spent on Ohlin springs and decent oil is an improvement over stock

A fender extender is only £15 and i'm pretty sure they are all much the same (don't think there is an official suzuki one. Definitely worth doing especially if you ride in the wet a lot.

As for front end - there are different levels of what you can do - Northy posted his definitive list a while ago, but it goes something like this (feel free to correct me anyone )

Springs and oil = ~£100
Springs, oil + emulators = ~£200
Cartridge kit = ~£350
GSXR front end = ~£600-£800 (? guess from what people on here have said) But you can sell your old SV bits to ease the cost, if not pretty much match it.

The more you spend the better it will be, but I think the question is its how much better vs.the extra cost of the more expensive options.

[northwind]

Lukemillar is spot on, saves me doing it GSXR works out the cheapest if you sell high and buy cheap, but it's quite intimidating to do and affects your insurance. If you're a big'un it'll still want revalving and respringing to suit anyway, so there's potentially more costs. Any reasonably handy person can do springs and oil though.

I did springs and oil, and really it was all the upgrade I needed, I could've been quite happy with it. Couldn't go back now, but that's not the same thing at all Check out the Racetech spring calculator, the Ohlins ones are about 8.0 (or is it .80?) which suits people up to maybe 13 stone from memory.

Thanks for all the feed back guys! What are emulators though?

Originally Posted by Maestro

Thanks for all the feed back guys! What are emulators though?

The SV forks use damping rods which in a crude terms works by forcing the fork oil through a series of holes in the damping rod at the bottom of the fork tubes. The problem is that depending on how quickly the oil is forced through the holes affects the damping i.e you can set it up for high speed damping, but at a lower speed it won't work as well and vice versa. Suzuki just have to pick as best all round setup as possible which isn't ideal.

Emulators are a valves that sit on top of the damping rods and under the springs. The damping rods are drilled to have no effect on the damping is then taken over by these valves which have a preload adjustment on them for fine tuning.

Wow, almost convinced myself I know what I'm talking about. Almost.