Cheap emulator alternatives

Got mine fitted, could not open the holes up in the damper rod so i stuck in another two holes the same diameter as the existing 8mm holes, filled in the top rebound hole and put it all together, used a 120mm oil level with the emulators fiitted. Immediatly obvious that they work as i put the emulators in before the oil and had to 'pump' the forks to get the oil in correctly, similar to pumping cartridge forks.

Anyway the seem to work great with two turns, much less harsh a ride, in fact they now show how badly setup the rear is.

oh well time to tinker with the zx6 shock

Originally Posted by rc mad

Anyway the seem to work great with two turns, much less harsh a ride, in fact they now show how badly setup the rear is.

oh well time to tinker with the zx6 shock

yah, gotta watch for that - you can't well have the front nicely damped and the back pogoing all over the shop or you're gonna find the weeds in some tight, rough little corner.

[mikerj]

In case anyone else has a non-SV650 bike with basic non-cartridge forks they would like to improve, I fitted a set of these emulators to my brothers GPZ500 hack yesterday as the forks needed to be rebuilt anyway. Had to turn down the OD of the main body and the locating step by about 1.5mm, a very simple job if you have access to a lathe. Now waiting for the uprated springs to be delivered (never seen a more soggy front end - makes a stock SV look positively oversprung!) before I can set them up properly, but the improvement in compression damping is already very noticeable - less dive under braking and less harshness over bumps.

It's worth taking the emulators apart and lapping the return valve sealing surface on some fine wet and dry (~800-1000 grit) against a piece of glass to get them flat (i.e. the underside of the thin brass "lid" and the flat side of the internal steel washer) since on mine at least there were burrs from the machining in production that means it didn't seal very well.

Originally Posted by mikerj

In case anyone else has a non-SV650 bike with basic non-cartridge forks they would like to improve, I fitted a set of these emulators to my brothers GPZ500 hack yesterday as the forks needed to be rebuilt anyway. Had to turn down the OD of the main body and the locating step by about 1.5mm, a very simple job if you have access to a lathe. Now waiting for the uprated springs to be delivered (never seen a more soggy front end - makes a stock SV look positively oversprung!) before I can set them up properly, but the improvement in compression damping is already very noticeable - less dive under braking and less harshness over bumps.

It's worth taking the emulators apart and lapping the return valve sealing surface on some fine wet and dry (~800-1000 grit) against a piece of glass to get them flat (i.e. the underside of the thin brass "lid" and the flat side of the internal steel washer) since on mine at least there were burrs from the machining in production that means it didn't seal very well.

mikerj i am on this boat, did you fill the damper rod rebound hole on the gpz forks? or would you do it now?

[mikerj]

Originally Posted by peeterus

mikerj i am on this boat, did you fill the damper rod rebound hole on the gpz forks? or would you do it now?

Yes, I did the modifications as per the SV650, i.e. drilled out the compression holes in the lower part of the damper rod and filled in the rebound hole. The damper rod is a bit smaller than the SV one, so I think I had to go a little smaller with the compression holes, but my memory is crap! Should be obvious how large you can go when you gt them out though. The GPZ was sold a couple of years back and the new owner was amazed at how good the suspension was compared to his old one.

ok thanks, i will drill 4 8,5mm compresion, filled rebounds and 7,5 or 10 sae oil and see