filter_jam

Has anyone changed the stock fork springs with the Ohlins springs ?
Any change in handling ?
Is it worth doing the change ?

JamieDaugherty

I do not have first hand experience with the Ohlins springs, but I can tell you that getting the proper spring rate for your weight will certainly make an improvement in the handling. The rest of the world might be full of 160lb 'average' riders, but here in the land-o-plenty we have a lot of people that weigh much more. I am a good example of that! Honda doesn't want to make special US-only springs if they don't have to, so those of us who wear XL size shirts need to buy different springs if we want to maximize the performance of our bikes.

fundgh

As a side note, after doing a comparison on the scale, I have determined that my gear weighs in at 24 lbs. This takes me from an average 165-170 lbs, to 190 lbs geared up. Do you suppose the spring rate is referring to a geared up rider? If this is the case, if the bike is sprung for a 160-170 lb rider, does this mean that they really think that most people riding these bikes are tipping the scale at 140 lbs?

How is the spring rate determined? I bought a used bike and the P/O told me that he had Racetech springs put in it, how can I find out what rate the springs are?

redlinetech

Always a geared rider.

tommygdbr

www.racetech.com I think they ask for your wieght WITHOUT gear.... I might be wrong.......

superbling

When I got a wilbers shock, they wanted to know weight with gear, how much my tankbag typically weighed, did I normally have saddlebags mounted, etc.

Don't rule out racetech and sonic springs also.

Hawkrider

Spring rate takes both the bike weight and GEARED UP rider into consideration.

Here's how they figure it: The VTR is about 474#, according to Honda, and she carries about 55% of her weight in the rear. Rider is about 75% in the rear too, depending on rider and riding position. Say you're 190# geared up.

474*.55 = 260.7 = 118.3kg
190*.75 = 142.5 = 64.6kg

Proper UNladen sag (without rider) is about 12-15mm. Let's use 15. Laden (rider) sag should be about 25mm. This is 10mm difference. So now in order to get that 10mm sag with the rider, divide the rider weight by the difference between laden and unladen:

64.6kg / 10mm = 6.46kg/mm (Ohlins has a 6.52 so we'll use that)

That's about a 365#/in spring.

So now let's figure out if the bike will have proper unladen sag:

118.3kg / 6.52 kg/mm = 18.1mm

This is more unladen sag than what we want so as you can see we have to add some preload (most springs are preloaded anyway). You could choose a slightly softer spring and add a bit more preload to get correct laden sag, which is probably what I'd do in this case. 6.11kg/mm spring for you. One more thing, I don't know about your bike, but I had mine measured on a calibrated scale with 3/4 tank of gas and it was 434 lbs. So maybe the 6.52kg/mm spring will work after all.