spacers inside front forks???

hi, have just replaced the fork seals and found someone had put 12mm spacers on top of the fork springs. I left them out, put 300ml of10w oil in the forks. Haynes reccommends 276ml of 5w oil. Did this on the last one and it improved the front end loads. But on this one have found the forks are a lot stiffer, but they don't come back up very well. Am going to put the spacers back in and see how that is. I checked the length of the forksprings and they are good, but was wondering if anyone had come across spacers in forks before.and why they were used. Cheers

 

they are there to adjust preload? put them back in

 

It depends on your bike and on the springs; they're supposed to be there on some bikes in some applications, not on others.

You didn't give us anything to go on, bike-wise.

 

I have added around 1" of pre-load to front forks by using coins of the correct diameter on top of the springs. I've also increased the amount of oil in the forks, which is also of a thicker grade - 10W, I think.

Whilst not transforming the bike, it can only help, as the standard set-up is appallingly soft.

Nige

 

the bike is a 1991 xj900f, 4BB model, you guys call it a seca i believe. I have three of them, all blue/white. It is the only one i have found spacers in. They are not shown in either the yamaha manual or the haynes comic. I was thinking along the lines of preload adjustment, but surely removing them shouldn't affect the rate at which the forks come back up. I am thinking maybe the springs are from another bike, but whilst being the right length are too weak and these spacers were added to compensate

 

I'd have thought that they've been added to try and stiffen up the front end - what happens if you pull-up on the bars, do the forks extend easily? If not, they may be bent. Somebody has put the spacers in for a reason...

You could compare the springs/spring rate with some out of one of your other bikes.

Haven't ridden the model you have (mine's an '81) but it probably shares the type of soggy suspension which Yamaha chose to fit to these models.

 

I use a hunk of PVC pipe on top of the spring and a 15w fork oil.

 

if i pull up on the forks they lift easily, stanchions are not bent. The springs are thee same length as the ones in the other bikes, both have a varied pitch for the coils but the suspect ones have more coils in them, ie a closer pitch. May have a play with different lengths and see. But yeah, it has the traditional soft front end on it.