so as long as I;m tearing my 500 down I was thinking now would be a good time for some upgrades. I was thinking new front springs and fork emulators.

My question is, what is the process involved in these upgrades? Will i have to dismantle the triple tree? I kinda wanted to take it down to just the frame anyways so I could clean/paint the frame.

About how long will it take to add fork emulators and new springs?

also, where do you guys go for a new shock?

Thanks.

-Joe

 

Sadly Ohlins does not make a shock for our bike. I'm pretty pleased with the Works Performance shock (mostly for the ease of preload adjustment) but it was a little bit of a trick to cram the remote reservoir into the tailsection with the regulator/rectifyer & junk already in there.
To install the springs, oil & emulator, you'll have to remove and disassemble the forks. The hardest part is removing the damping rods and drill four large holes in them and do a meticulous job of deburring and cleaning all the shavings out of that damping rod because you DON'T want them in there scraping up your fork seals. But you basically leave the triple clamps on the bike.
If you were busting @$$ and had all the tools handy, you could probably finish it in 2 or 3 hours, but I don't like to think of projects like this in terms of "how long it takes." Some guys boast, "I can perform a valve adjustment in an hour and a half!" but that means they left everything dirty and didn't put the love & q-tips into it on their way in and out. You don't want to rush, especially when drilling, chamfering/deburring and cleaning those damping rods.
Good luck and let us know how it goes!
-CCinC

 

oh man Chris, how did I know you'd be the first to chime in! Thanks for the reply. I ordered all the goods today (new front springs, emulators, oil, fork seals - mine are starting to crack a lil) I'll probably end up taking on this task in a couple weeks when everything arrives and my coworker from rochester rides out on his 250. He got the same upgrades for his bike, but since he has to ride the 60 miles each way to do the work we're going to upgrade my bike first, so if we screw anything up I don't have to drive his butt back to rochester with his 250 out of commision on the back of my old man's truck!

Looks like I'm going to have to haul a$$ on the teardown so I can have the frame ready before we do the suspension mods. with all the work i have/am going to put into this bike i may end up letting it sleep in the spare bedroom instead of the garage... don't want anything ot happen to it!