Front Suspension Upgrade - FZR

The stupid thing is Ikon is Australian and instead of catering to the local market they make things for overseas.
I think the FZR 600,750 and 1000 would be as scarce as the 400 here, whereas the 250 is abundant and in demand as its a LAMS bike so has a large following , especially from the young rev heads with the 'fastest learner bike' tag.

Also with a bit of researching it comes up clear the original stock suspension is soft from the factory and certainly is alot worse after 20+ years of use.

 

This the part u are referring to?

Many OEM jets were produced with no bleed holes in the shank, while all aftermarket pilot jets have
them; this difference is not significant.

I just had a quick glimpse at this and will read it in more detail .... but to put it basiclly these valves adjust the flow of oil to change the dampening rate?

http://racetech.com/HTML_FILES/DampingRodForks.HTML

And apologies if u have mentioned this already but these will just drop in to our setup?

And are u going to use the 250 springs or go for one of the available 400 sets?

 

What I would really like to know is the the stock spring free length spec for the 3LN1 so I know if the originals are worth pissing about with.

As the other plan of attack could be to drop in these valves (if they are actually a straight drop in) with the present springs and spacer and use 15W oil

Does anyone have these extra spacers (as in my running bike) or just the one longer one?

 

Sent off an email to Ikon/Proven Products requesting specs,prices,shipping costs etc for the 400 springs.

 

Sounds reasonable .... thanx mate

Are springs actually capable of compressing over time a few MMs .... as in sagging .... or do they just lose the ability to hold their spring rate? .... does that make sense?

The Zeal free length is 406.5 .... would ours have been that originally?

I wonder if all our 3LNs are 400mm

Yea Im liking this idea .... but it would be good to know if the original springs are worth the effort (as in if they are shagged out or not)
I guess if there is no great improvement , valves plus new FZR400 springs is the next step.

They dive badly now ... before that extra spacer a fly landing on the bars probably made them sink

Yea my spares are also 130mm so Id assume thats the stock issue .... the parts cat has what looks like that 1 "long" spacer.

Ill pull my running bike springs out soon to see if they are 400mm also.

I have a mate and hes on the verge of buying an FZR , albeit I think a 3LN3 .... but will be interesting to see whats in his forks.

If we bulk buy emulators I might get a set for his also.

..... another Fizzer to work on .... just what I need!

 

Its seems funny that there isnt something available aftermarket or plenty of stock replacements for the springs in Japan .....and maybe it really is junk right from scratch.
Would be interesting to get a new set to test out this theory.

Well heres the good news of the day .... Ikon Suspension have been very forthcoming .... an answer to my email first thing this morning!
Im going to offer to send them my spare front springs and also the spare rear shock.

Hi Brian,

Thanks for contacting us. The progressive rate springs we do for the later FZR400’s are 330mm long with an OD of 35.0mm. Whether these are suitable for the 250 or not is something we don’t know at this point. Given that your bike is the 250 I think we are better to review more directly what it requires before thinking too much about the springs for the 400. To do that I would want to have the free length of the spring, the OD of the spring, the OD of the wire the spring is made from and to total number of coils from absolute tip of wire to tip of wire (this can be a fraction of a coil too such as 30.3 coils).

Once we know those things and taking on board what you have said about the softness we can look at what sort of solutions can be applied. Perhaps after we have solved the front end we can get to work with you on the rear.

As for why this has not been done before, there are many reasons. In our case I would simply say we have never been asked before. Strange as that may sound it is the most common reason. Once asked if we can get the right kind of data then we can most often arrive at a solution.

Regards
Geoff

 

Definately Phil ..... An upgraded set of springs specifically for the 250 with a set of emulators for a bit of adjustment capabilities would do me just fine.