Honda ST1100 Section > Suspension ST1100

Melbourne Suspension Revalve

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saaz:
Garry, sorry to reply late but travelling. Standard, the anti dive side should stiffen up compression damping to stop dive, but this hardens it up when you might need some travel for bumps. With a damper rod setup changing the fork oil weight affects damping. If you search for gold valve emulator there is information about damper rods and how they work. Rebound from memory is there but relies on the weight of the fork oil, but changing this also affects compression damping unless you change the size of the holes. So a damper rod can be tricky to set up as competing issues.

I have fitted a gold valve emulator and progressive fork springs. A straight weight spring did not suit my setup as I have a four ales rear shock, which is an air spring so progressive.

The cartridge in one side may well fit in the other as how they attach down the bottom seems the same.

The cartridge has compression and rebound by changing shim stacks. I would not bother upgrading them as I found the replacements to be very similar.

The benefit of the gold valve emulator is that the front end moves consistently over bigger bumps, rather that stiffening up the more the forks compress. I noticed this first ride up around Oberon when I hit some big bumps that would have jarred badly before, but even set too stiff they were handled easily.

Garry_Coates:
Hi SAAZ,
         thanks for your reply. I appreciate your feedback on the damper rods and cartridge but I am a little surprised. I have had other cartridge forks re-valved and they have been much better. This could be because I tend to use much heavy springs than stock and the standard valving could not be easily adjusted to suit. Dampening for 0.61 kg/mm springs is hardly going to be adequate 1.2 k/mm. Rebound will be way off.

What you have also confirmed is that both forks share compression and rebound duties which must give some interesting results if they are set-up differently.

I do favour the idea of using cartridges in both forks and would go to closed cartridges if I could find somebody with experience in doing this for the ST. 

 "I would not bother upgrading them as I found the replacements to be very similar."

Do you mean that the racetech shim stack recommendations where very similar to stock or that the replacement parts looked similar ? 

Regards
          Garry

 

Lionel:
 Saaz " ... as I have a four ales rear shock ..."
What made you choose four ales?
Why not a six pack?

saaz:
Replacement shims and recommended shims seemed very similar. The main difference was getting the emulator adjustment right. Initial recommendation was way too stiff but rode bumps ok.

Garry_Coates:
Thanks Saaz,
          I am not convinced that the Racetech recommendations tools work that well. ST1100 fork spring rates are generally much lower than others for a specific weight. The TXC310R and XR600R fork spring rate recommendations for me where very high. The shops I used installed lower spring rates and different valving with good results.

This is the main reason I have not bought the Racetech ST fork kit. I reckon I would need to have the forks apart multiple times before I was happy as there is no external adjustment.

There are a number of companies that make replacement fork cartridge kits including Progressive. Only Traxxion (USA) claim to do one for the ST but it requires some mods and is done in-house..
 
I am going to spend some time at the wreckers to see if I can pick up a spare ST cartridge to play with.

Regards
          Garry

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