Which Fork Oil?

Alright so just decided to bite the bullet and order an Abba stand, mainly so I can sort my 8/9yr old fork oil out.

Local bike shop wanted £45 per hour x 2 for doing the fork oil so an extra tenner for a stand to use forever and do it myself was easily justified with the Mrs

I remember reading somehwere on here that fork oils are not made equal - as in two 10w oils may have a different viscosity rating (or something along those lines), and mixing oils may be possible/desired?

What should I go for?

Stock springs, I'm about 8.5-9stone fully geared depending on whether or not I have eaten breakfast

Have Haynes so will be having a gander through that at some point, although I have struggled with some section of Haynes before with clarity!

Hoping this will transform the front end for me

[TamSV]

If you're keeping everthing stock then I wouldn't worry too much about the specifics of the fork oil. At your weight I'd go with Suzuki's recommended 10w. You can mix viscosities from the same manufacturer if you're fine tuning with oil, but with the stock SV setup I think you'd be wasting your time.

I'm going to change oil in my SV forks soon and I'll be using Silkolene 10w because the local bike shop's got a shelf full of it. The non-synthetic Castrol oil that Halfords do would be just as good I'm sure. Even Halfords own brand would likely be OK.

Pretty much anything will be better than the fishy ditch water that'll be in there at the moment.

Good choice with the Abba stand BTW - I use mine all the time.

Thanks Tam.

Well after the Forks, it'll be the Valve clearances I'll be checking, as I have under 3k til 30k and I'm not sure if its ever been checked. Well worth the £106 or whatever. Still only limited to stuff that I can get completed well within a day though, as I wouldnt be happy leaving my bike in pieces outside.

I'll probably use the Silkolene as well, as that is what my local bike shop stocks.

If I wasn't so chicken **** I'd get the GSXR front end but alas, I am too chicken **** Its not necessarily the stiffness that I need as I weigh about as much as a bag of sugar but I think I'm having issues with the other settings (reb/comp/damp) that the SV is not adjustable for.

Then again I'm not really sure what is happening, all I know is when I ride it hard, esp round any corners, bumps really unsettle the bike.

[TamSV]

While you have the forks off, it would be worthwhile checking and regreasing the head bearings. If you can do that, and get the SV bits back on, then you could have done a GSXR swap.

A more straightforward option, if you're changing the fork oil anyway, is dropping in something like Hagon progressive springs. Apparently that's a big improvement for no more work than you're already doing. I'm mulling that over for my standard SV, but then I'm mulling over lots of things for that bike.

Off to re-research the gsxr swap now.

Thought about Hagons then decided it wasnt worth it. As I say, I dont believe my issue is with the sniffness of the springs; I did a check using that suspension calc going round and my recommended spring rate is damn near what is already in the SV as stock.

[TamSV]

I wasn't trying to talk you into that but it sounds like I was pushing at an open door.

If you do decide to stay with stock then I'm pretty convinced a change of oil will improve things for you. If your current fork oil has been in there for 9 years/30,000 miles then it's done.

Well I started looking, sifting through the pages and pages of scattered information, and lost the will to do it lol. Then I noticed how cheap one can pick up a GSXR nowadays anyway...! But I must not tempt myself.

Will do the oil first, and go from there.

[muzikill]

How about making this a thread with pics to see how you get on? things you discover from a novices point of view are pretty welcome. im considering doing this job soon so i would be interested to see!

You're on.

Time to give something back to the org!

Depending on when Abba arrives & weather permitting it will be either this weekend, or the weekend after next (working inbetween).

Hong my man, i`m having new maxton springs and oil in my bike to sort out my (worse than yours) front end. Yorki Chris told me to get a pair of emulators from the below link to finish off the suspension.

https://www.debrix.com/ProductDetail...ode=24-0361-VT

£38 delivered from the USA.