Not sure if this has been done before so please forgive me if it has.

I had my forks apart this week to do a second revalve and somewhere along the line I came across the Indy Unlimited thread with extended fork travel, so this got me thinking (always dangerous I am told).

To cut a long story short I found a way of extending the cartidge by 30mm to give extra fork travel, the stock springs will just take this before they start to bind, The outer fork tubes seem plenty long enough to cope with this extension and could go even longer but new springs would be needed.

Did a good hundered mile ride today around South Wales and it all seems to work very well.





It seems to be to be a cheap and easy way to make the V even more versatile and looks great as well.

The Indy cartdige was $1400, mine is well under $14......

Bart

That is a very interesting mod! I have reached too many times the travel limits of the V front forks in adventure rides, however your mod seems a bit too technical for my poor mecanical skills. If you can elaborate with pictures and intructions that would be awesome.

The left fork is pretty easy as the dummy cartridge has a excess of travel already so only needs a spacer under the cartridge and a longer bolt.

The right leg is a little more complicated in that a piece of tube is added to the bottom of the cartridge for the compression valve to sit in. I then sleeved the two tubes as well as moving the holes down.



The damper rod stop also needs to be removed to get the travel, but the damper piston still stays in the original tube.

Hope this makes sense

Bart

So you lengthened the cartridge by some type of threaded extender. Then you moved the bottom out cone on the damper rod "up" in order to lengthen the downward stroke.

1) Did you modify the length of the damper rod?
2) Did you modify the pre-load spacer?
3) How much preload are you running?
4) And you said you sleeved the right cartridge presumably to block the compression holes?

Hi Phoneman,

To answer your points.

1 Once the damper rod stop or bottom out piece is removed there is more than enough travel in the damper rod, in fact with longer springs it would be possible to get almost 200mm of travel.

2 Pre load spacer is untouched.

3 At the moment am on zero pre load but have not dialed it in yet.

4 The extension tube, holding the compression valve, was butted up to the existing tube then a sleeve was placed over this to hold this tube and block up the compression holes and new holes made lower down. The compression valve is in the position shown in the photo.

All this just allows the forks to extend further, therefore giving a higher ride height. The fork length when fully compressed will be as before but of course will take greater load to do this so will reduce bottoming out.

Bart

ingenious! I was thinking about pulling the bottom out cone when I did my revalve, probably would have gained 15mm-ish travel without a ride height increase, but then bottoming out could really pound the fork internals so it wasn't worth it to me, especially since i'm 97% street/3% fire roads. I don't know that I'd do this mod because I'd have to respring and the front end is pretty damn good right now, but love the idea.
If you have a link to the post where indy unlimited or discuss this mod, please post. props to you for digging in and experimenting.

this link got me to thinking you could make an adjustable length fork, check out these bicycle fork internals...
http://www.avalanchedownhillracing.c...nternals.html#

Here is the Indy Unlimited link http://advrider.com/forums/showthrea...76645&page=221 post no 3310.

Have been doing a little further testing with this setup and have not felt it bottom out yet, but had the forks off today and did a full compression test and it looks like the stock springs start to bind on max compression so I think if anyone does this a 20mm spacer rather than a 30mm spacer will work better with stock springs, or just add some spring length and reduce the top spacer length accordingly.
Am curretly looking at alternative springs or adding a short soft second spring to give some progressive springing. This is the first time I have done anything like this so any comments are much appreciated.

Cheers
Bart

damn, Indy's bike looks sweet but for the $ I would have just bought a triumph 800, still, it's unique and looks the business. the air filter pods caught my eye. interesting comment about the dust getting thru the stock filter. I was wondering if the 2012 ninja's paper filter would retrofit to the V, but it looks like no dice from looking at the fiche.

sounds like it's time to go to straight rate springs, should be easier to work with in your situation.

Progressive Suspension (USA) #11-1521 fork springs: 0.71 to 1.16 kg/mm (30 to 45 lbs/in), 340mm free length, 37mm OD could work by shortening the spacers like Gustavo did to install his Sonic springs. Stock fork springs are 36mm OD by 300mm long, and fork bore is 40mm ID.

http://www.progressivesuspension.com/pdfs/7100-105.pdf

$80.86 per pair from: http://www.powersportsuperstore.com/...-p/4108742.htm

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nk....c0.m270.l1313

Try a 50/50 mix of 15W and 10W premium synthetic fork oil for a resulting 12.5W.

Tomla,
Yes I agree the Indy bike does look cool but at a very uncool price.
The dust issue was new to me too and have not heard that before on here, there must be plenty of guys on your side of the pond who run in dust unlike on this side. However I am off to Morocco in March , hence all these mods, so it would be interesting to hear if anyone else has had dust issues.

Invader
Great info there on the springs but am not clear on what the minimum length would be before the spring starts to bind/lock up.

Bart

Being a 13.33% longer (and 2.78% wider), I suppose it is able to compress more without binding, even though a portion of the progressive spring's coil is more tightly spaced.

Versys spring:

I suppose all we need is the number of coils and wire thickness to give a theoretical minimum length...... I will look into it.

Thanks

Bart

Stock Versys spring has 21 working coils ranging from 4.9 to 5.1mm in wire diameter.

I found a photo of the actual 11-1521 spring (left). It has 25 working coils.



http://tech.bareasschoppers.com/susp...ment-vtx-1800/

Progressive Suspension # 11-1526 springs are even longer than # 11-1521 at 368mm instead of 340mm, and with the same 37mm OD and 0.71 to 1.16 kg/mm rate.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nk....c0.m270.l1313

Good find Invader.

Have been playing around with a online spring calculator and the V came out at .89Kg/mm, so in the ball park and the 1526 at 1.06Kg/mm gave 209mm of travel so again in the ball park.

My only dilema is if I order them and they do not work I cannot see me selling them over here.......

Will have to sleep on it...

Bart

Either 1526 or 1521 springs could be used in any Versys' stock or modified forks... Many Versys blokes in the UK forum.

Just rechecked the ID of the lower fork tube and it has a slight taper at the top and the ID reduces down to 37mm after about 5mm, so a 37mm OD spring could be a bit tight..

Damn... It tapers down that much, to no bigger than 37mm? The stock springs are in fact 36mm, and with not much space to spare for them?
If so, you might have to get custom springs made, if you can't just add a spring extension.

Have been busy in the garage over the last few weeks and finally today went out to test my MK 2 version.

In the end I had to go for some longer springs to get my target travel of 180mm at the front and so bought these from K Tech in the UK, they are 335mm long and .85kg/mm with new shorter spacers.



While the forks were off and apart I checked the standard travel and came up with 143mm, somewhat short of the Kawasaki spec, is this just on my bike?
However this could go to explain why when the mudguard(fender) is moved up for bigger tyres it does not touch the bottom yoke on full compression.

So to get my 180mm of travel I added A 37mm spacer as before and then sleeved it and brazed it to the cartridge. A groove was machined in the spacer to take the standard retaining clip. New holes were made as well for the oil flow.







I think if I did this again I would have a one piece turned extension sleeve made and maybe tack weld it in place to give a neater and more precise finish.

Am running a 17, 15,14,13 shim stack with 10w oil and now the bike feels much more balanced with the R1 shock fitted and it still looks near stock and has twin discs.

The test run today was done with the 17" front wheel (sorry no photos) with the forks moved up through the yokes to compensate for the additional front ride height. When the 19" goes on they will be dropped down the yokes sothat the mudguard will clear the bottom yoke and to give more ground clearence for dual sport riding

It would be so easy for Kawasaki to do this to the V and would only cost then a few pence for the extra metal, I think this method could be used on other bikes too...!!!

Hopefully this will all continue to work well but if it does not it can be reversed back to stock but keeping the new springs.

Bart