First Generation Ascots > The Thumper Years: Modified To Full Customs

FT500 Vintage racer

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hellblom:
Well on the way! Looks good.

FT500R:
Refurbished the front forks this weekend.
Not the first one I did and since this is not a cartridge style fork it was really easy.
Replaced all the seals and slider bushings as the seals were leaking and the bushings completely worn.
I removed the whole anti-dive system as this will lockup the forks when braking on a bumpy road (not something you want when riding on street circuits)

Also drilled some extra holes in the damping rods to prepare for cartridge emulators. I have gone for the YSS PD valves instead of the more well known racetech gold valves. Primarily because the YSS are actually obtainable in Europe and they are a lot cheaper.
I'll be running 15wt fork oil and will have to shorten the spring or the spacer to accomodate for the PD valve. Will post more on that whenever I get them.

The postal company has lost my package with the valves though but at least everything is prepared and they should be a quick drop in.

FT500R:
Fully welded the exhaust and slapped some cheap heat resistant paint on it. (I also drilled some holes in the header to weld in the inner tubes that got loose, seems to have worked)
After that I got some new sticky stuff for the FT.
I went with Bridgestone RS10s. Read a lot of good reviews about them, they were pretty affordable and were available as a set in the sizes I wanted. Really happy with them. I got 110/70/17 for the front and 140/70/17 for the rear.

For the front forks I came across these things:

These fit on the forks instead of the current caps. I would loose the air valves and with that the possibility to pressurize the forks but would gain pre-load adjustment. Anyone any experience with something similar?

murdo:
I used the adjustable top caps on one of my CBR250's and found they made a noticable difference.

FT500R:
Got the PD-valves in the mail this weekend and installed them.
Really clever little things.
You put them in your forks between the damper rod and the spring.
The spring preload of the little valve controlles the amount of oil that can flow when the forks compress, with that it controlles the compression damping.
Rebound is still controlled with the oil viscoscity.
I've set the valves on 3 turns preload (out of 7) for now. The forks still feel a bit soft but this could also be due to the relatively weak standard fork springs.
I had to shorten the fork spacer with 14mm (thickness of the PD-valves) to keep normal pre-load on the fork springs.
I'll keep them like this for now, changing the pre-load on the PD-valves is relatively easy so I can dail them in further when I get to test ride the bike a bit (you do have to 'open up' the forks by removing the top cap, spacer and springs).

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