Shortening Forks?

[prodgod]

I'm looking to shorten the forks on my 89 FZR600 by about 1.5" or so. I want to be able to push the forks down in the triples so the top of the forks are equal with the top triple, but without raising the front end. I'm not too worried about the forks becoming soft because of the shortening, the previous owner used this as a track bike and had the forks rebuilt to be stiffer.

How would I go about shortening the 600 forks?

Thanks

[reelrazor]

http://www.frankmain.qpg.com/

They make nice stuff, gotta actually call them, tho...old skool..kinda surprising they have a website (as basic as it is)..they used to run 1"x1" ads in the back of each cycle mag.

[DonTZ125]

That's basically all that site is - the WWW equivalent of a 1x1" back-of-the-mag ad...

What are you doing? Are you dropping the clip-ons under the triples?

I have to wonder if what you want to do could be accomplished simply by removing (or trimming) the spacers inside the forks. Push the fork tubes down, and the springs are at (close to) the desired pre-load length.

[thatkid]

http://www.frankmain.qpg.com/

They make nice stuff, gotta actually call them, tho...old skool..kinda surprising they have a website (as basic as it is)..they used to run 1"x1" ads in the back of each cycle mag.

Heh, that place is about 40 min from me!

[prodgod]

What are you doing? Are you dropping the clip-ons under the triples?

I have to wonder if what you want to do could be accomplished simply by removing (or trimming) the spacers inside the forks. Push the fork tubes down, and the springs are at (close to) the desired pre-load length.

That's exactly what I'm doing.

I know plenty of other people who have shortened this style of forks by trimming the spacer inside the forks, but wasn't sure if you could do it with these ones.

[prodgod]

Bump, anybody know if I could shorten them by trimming the spacer in the fork?

[reelrazor]

Bump, anybody know if I could shorten them by trimming the spacer in the fork?

Yes, you CAN make them 'shorter' by trimming the preload spacer.

It won't really make them shorter-it will just decrease the preload. The unloaded length of the assembled fork will not change

But, you will lose the same amount in suspension travel because you are 'shortening' the forks by having basically waaay too much static sag.

The inner fork tubes will be farther down (to start with) in the external tubes and will physically bottom in them(steel on aluminum)-possibly before the spring reaches coil bind (which is what SHOULD happen at full compression).

The proper way to do this is to get shorter inner tubes. Hell, the Harley boys are that smart.

the people from Frank's (link I posted before) will supply tubes to YOUR spec for about $120 per set, with price jumps for extras such as performance coatings or radically different lengths ( >+4 or >- 4" )


Me, I'd be cheap too....and just leave an inch and a half of fork above the crown-make a good camera mount on one side...radar detector mount on the other