Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="mgorman, post: 209219, member: 18371"] I stand up alot when I ride. I ususaly only sit when I need the wheels to stick in a corner that I will be powering out of. Since my hands are holding on a little more than a person sitting the first thing I always notice is how the forks feel. I supose if you had two identicaly dampened forks of different size I might be able to notice the flex. I have been jumping back and forth between 3 different bikes lately all in the same day. A '99 KTM300, 2000 DRZ400 and my '99 XR250. Dampening is the thing I notice most and to be truthfull the only flex I have ever notice was on my 95 XR250 and it was the frame, not the forks that I noticed. When you can look down in the whoops and see your whole fork, tree and bar assembly flexing seperately from the frame, something is wrong. Especialy when the paint is totaly missing from all welds in the main triangle and the downtube is full of spider cracks. Back to the origial post, Every bike needs a slightly different style to ride. Ride a CR500 the same way you ride a CR125 and I will send you flowers for the grave or bleach for your britches. A person needs to feel totaly at home on the bike that he or she is riding. A bike that deflects and bounces all over the trail is not going to inspire confidence in anyone. I took the advice of the famous ISDE medalist Drew Smith and concentrated on my suspension before I did anything at all to the motor. It was money well spent. I was able to go a sustantial amount faster. NO rider has ever gotten off my W.E.R. suspended XR and had one complaint about the suspension or its handling. (sorry there is no fork brace on it) Another thing that novice riders make is waiting too long to replace or cut thier tires. A tire with rounded edges won't hook up on hard splippery surfaces. Something as simple as turning a tire around or borowing the turkey carver will give an old tire a dozen more rides. After riding your bike, these are my personal observations The first thing you need to do Ben is get them forks back to where KTM designed them to be. This way we can get to your dampening screws. Set the compresion at full soft and then go in a few clicks to start. I could not set or change any of your settings because the legs were too high. 2nd thing is to get the sag set on the rear to your weight and the compression the same as the front. If you have to crank the spring down very far, I'd try the heavier spring. An over preloaded spring will cause the 1st few inches of travel to be harsh and the rest normal or soft. 3rd, Sit down with a good serrated knife and cut a new square edge into the leading edge of the rear tires knobs. That was the scariest part of ring the beast. It wouldn't hook up. 4th Put the spark arrester silencer on the bike . It will take the bite out of the bark and smooth out the power. I did that to my 300 and loved it. It also made it alot quieter. Once you have that done you can ride and practice all you want. Take along a screw driver like I did Saturday. Don't be afraid to turn those adjusters and feel the differences they make. I set the power valve "in" slightly from Dozers. You should play with that alot on a short loop that you can repeat continuously. Same with the suspension. After doing this to Slammers DRZ it was a blast to ride. Because we had to take the settings to the extremes, we both agreed that the Z needs a revalve. And remember, STAND UP!!!! If you want any help with these things, just ask. So far, I can't ride this weekend. Set-Up for comfort first, power just gets you into trouble faster. BTW, Slammer laughed his butt off about the Submarine jokes we sent him... [/QUOTE]

Verification: Which ocean is California closest to?