erno

Hi guys
Was wondering what height for the rc51 top triple
On the rc51 f/end conversion
Some say 17mm/20mm from top of tube?
Or is it a personnel preference

cheers

GTS

Measure your height before you do the swap and put it back to the same height. And by height I mean ride height, not mm from the top of the forks. Then ride it and adjust it from there.

8541Hawk

Mine are set at the top line (of the three lines on the tubes) on the forks.
Which is real close to the stock geometry on the front.

erno

Thanks again guys appreciate it
I know Im a pain in the **** asking about the front end setup
But no one over has done the rc51 con, besides 1 guy who got the shop to do it for him.
So its baby steps at the moment



cheers

1971allchaos

Mike- Please elaborate..
If the triple claps are set lower on the forks tubes- Then this lowers the geometry of the front- and cause the turning quicker?
AND
Has you instructed bringing the forks to the top rings, as factory setting will cause turns-back to normal?
Are the RC-51 forks longer, or shorter than OEM S-hawk forks?

8541Hawk

I'll try...

For your first question, yes pulling the fork tubes up will cause quicker turning. The down sides are you lower the CG, which slows the side to side transitions and you also lose ground clearance. The ground clearance issue is important on a SH as the first hard part to touch down is the header in right hand turns.

For your second part, yes if you set the forks at the stock location and made no other changes it would turn in like the stock set up.

And for the last part, I don't have my sheet with all the measurement but off the top of my head the RC forks are somewhere between 3-5mm shorter than stock.

So now to give the rest of the info and show what I'm talking about.

When I first installed the forks I used a 954 lower. The issue I had was that the forks had to be pulled up 10mm in order to get full engagement in the lower triple.

So it ended up looking like this:



In this pic you can see the RC forks have 3 sets of lines on them that are "stock", "up 5mm" and "up 10mm" Though one of the main issues I had with my stock suspension was dragging the header (I ran the forks up 10mm and had a 6.35mm or .25" ride height spacer). I hadn't worn a hole through mine yet as Tweety has done but there are definite "witness" marks on it.

So what I did was change to a RC51 SP1 lower clamp which allows the forks to be pulled down to the "stock" location:



Then to get the geometry that I wanted I raised the rear ride height to 10mm. With this set up I have the ground clearance I needed with the added benefit of keeping the CG higher for quicker side to side transitions and the rake and trail numbers very close (once again I don't have my work sheet handy so I can't give exact numbers) to the stock suspension with the forks pulled up 10mm and a 6mm ride height spacer.

This works very well for me, though might be a touch quick for some folks.... but everyone rides differently.

So IMHO you do get the best results when running a RC front end by keeping the forks pulled all the way down and then adjusting the rear ride height until it turns the way that fits your riding style.

1971allchaos

OoRah.. I appreciate the editorial.. I asked as a benefit to all that reads these education threads .. I paid to have my bikes set-up/ and do little adjustments to my suspension - to fit my riding style..