Front and rear suspension upgrade

who makes the best rear shock for an sv? forks?

[northwind]

Penske triple, most would say, for the rear. Expensive... For the front? Nobody makes forks for the SV, but you could get Harris to make you up a set of yokes to fit Ohlins factory kit for about £20000 But for the rest of us, The Matris catridge kit seems a great option for the front of the injected models (I want to see more feedback on that, mind, it's fairly new to market) and emulators are tried and tested.

But I reckon a whole swap makes more sense for anyone that can work a head bearing, you get much better brakes, better quality parts, generally a lighter wheel too... And cheap, if not free. You can make SV forks better than stock GSXR if you put enough effort in, mind, but then you can always upgrade GSXR forks

Very easy to spend stupid money... But you do get ace results, not like power mods for the SV which are really fairly futile when all's said and done. I could've done my current suspension setup for £250 all in if I'd been cut costs on powdercoating and stuff, as it is I went a wee bit further and spent about £500- but still absolutely worth it, for me. It's also meant that I hit a woman who pulled out in front of me very very slowly, instead of at about 20mph, which is nice.

what year was the gsxr srad that is the best fit for a pointy correct? If so what do you have to do to make the head bearing work

and is there much cost/ performance benefits over emulators and springs.

[northwind]

I'm no good at pointies, but I think there's years that just bolt right in, could be wrong. K4 rings a bell...

Performance and cost depends to some extent on whether you need to revalve. If you weigh 100 kilos then springs and emulators set up for your weight could be better than standard GSXR forks... For me, at 65 kilos, most of the GSXR stuff is closer to perfect on my SV than it is on a standard GSXR So that makes it cheaper, revalving is for most of us a job for pros. Also depends if the forks you get need a service

I sold my SV bits for more than a basic GSXR front end swap would have cost, that's the bottom line for cost... I spent more on a new master cylinder, powdercoating, etc, but you don't have to. Emulators are not free But like I say, add in the price of a revalve and service on those GSXR forks and the cost ends up swinging a little the other way.

But remember, better actual suspension, full external adjustability, and brakes. Emulators are great if you want a standard look, or you don't want to take the whole front off your bike. Very well tried and tested option... But they're not really on the same page.

i am just looking for the best set up and maybe you should buy a pointy so you can become an experts on them to

[northwind]

Buy me one and I'll see how that goes

Best is dangerous, there's always something better, you can end up with aftermarket-spec Ohlins R&T or Marzocchi RACs and still benefit from a rebuilt or a tweak or a polish, and still know there's works items which are better still. The trick is to find where diminishing returns hit... Which IMO is somewhere around the K6 GSXR600 forks, which are basically ace. Most people within their working weight range wouldn't feel any need to upgrade those. The same probably goes for K4s, and K3s, and SRADs in fact as long as they're in good shape, but the newer forks don't cost much more and undeniably are better.

No matter what forks you get, you can make them better, bear this in mind and don't shoot for best, since frankly we don't need it. Once the improvements get down to a certain level you just get used to them and take them for granted. You can put Traxxion AK20s into those GSXR forks for $750 or so, and they'll be superb, but will they be $750 better than standard?

i would need a whole front end correct like wheel calipers rotors etc do you need a new tripple tree?

[northwind]

Yep... There's a brilliant thread on SV Rider for this, it's very long and contains probably too much info but it'll probably help you a lot.