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Dirt Bike Mods & Maintenance
Lowering The seat hight on my KTM
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[QUOTE="rollingp, post: 226882, member: 25488"] John Dowd runs 105 mm and you need to know that no two progressive springs test out the same so the sag is more variable on a KTM than a jap bike or a bike with a straight wound. The biggest problem with new to KTM riders is they always want to set the rider sag like a jap bike. Free sag is more critacle and there is more room to play with rider sag by seat of the pants feel. As long as your rider sag numbers arent extreamly off one way or the other( IE spring too soft or too stiff ) then there is the ability to give yourself the added drop to touch your feet. Putting a spacer in the shock changes when the spring begins to get progressivly stiffer because the actual travel of the shock is shorter. Now you have a spring that becomes longer in ralation to the shock and you are back to a three inch shaft and feel verses the new 4inch shaft . Coil bind is sooner pre load is increased . KTM , and Pro action, recommend setting the unladen sag at 35-40mm and only suggest checking the rider sag as a reference to check whether the spring is too stiff or too soft for the rider. The rider sag is not crucial. White Brothers recommends a straight rate on all KTMs even if they are not valved. The valving and the position of the shock shaft play a bigger part in the the performance of the pds system than the spring progression. Yes the pds system has a flatter progression curve than a cr because it doesnt have a linkage but you are assuming the progressive spring makes up for that and to a very small degree it does. But the internal valving is what really does the majority of the work. Have you ever tried a straight wound spring on a pds system? If you have say an 8.4 or an 8.9 you would understand what I am talking about.You guys have got to keep an open mind on this stuff. I am not trying to win an argument or put anyone down. We are all riders and racers but I would like to say I was directly invoved with the 98 pds system when it first came out. It was harsh and no-one early on had an idea of what to do with it. They had a long needle and very restricted free bleed. We were making our own needles and drilling bleed holes in the pistons. All the new KTMs have a very short needle and this is what controls the last inch of shock travel for bottom out resistance. The free bleed is greatly improved and the progressive valving of the shock is much better. If you get the fork and shock balanced even with a little more rider sag a short guy can ride the bike with less effort and being lower the bike will handle better. There is a point of going too far but again it is more seat of the pants feel espeacially on the shock. Try it once you can always go back. Allot of riders were shocked to find that Langston runs his steering stops all the way out and you would think the bike would be hard to turn. I was doing this not 30 min after owning my first pds KTM in 98. This keeps the bike from knifing and pushing the front wheel. The rider can lay the bike over more and once used to the set up he can get on the gas sooner and harder. I was glad to see Langston riding for KTM because he had allot of experiance with the bikes before comming to the USA. You will find a straight rate spring makes the ktm super plush yet still is resistant to bottoming. It settles more going into a turn and when you roll on the throttle the tire is pushed into the ground giving you major traction. Clearing doubles the bike stays lower and is a little harder to get lift from launch. It is harder to turn because the rear end sqauts more. Ajustments can be made in fork position , pre load etc and valving . What I am trying to say here is you really cant say if the rider can touch his feet with a 30 inch inseam than the set up is way off because this simply isnt the case. If it were than you wouldnt be able to do things like run a straight rate a progressive etc. I will tell you most of these stock progressive springs are the reason some of thes KTMs feel so harsh. They dont test out at what they claim. Out of three 02 520s with pds 7 advertised 7.6-9.5 mine was 7.15-10.9. another was 7.0-9.0 and one was 7.50-10.0. When tested and different compression lenghts the numbers were way off. My bike was riding in the middle of the stroke where the spring gets up to 9.5 and all the little bumps were bone jarring. Putting on last years pds 6 worked better. We discovered the first three coils of the stiffer pds 7 was being used up just sitting on the bike. The pds six ,a softer rated spring actually was firmer on the initial stroke.Smaller bumps were absorbed better and the bike sat the same height. We valved in more high speed comp and that was all we needed for my weight.The straight 8.4 was truley 8.4 and worked even better than the pds 6 progressive on the high speed small stuff. This was before we valved the shock. I think the progressive works better overall for most tracks espeacially sx type.My point is nothing is cut in stone with these bikes. Remember the first pds came wth straight rate springs. They relied on the long needle to resist bottoming. You can do much more with the new shocks . Cutting the subframe is fine but as I said before you have to make sure other parts of the bike arent in risk of damage. We have a guy out here that took 10mm off the lower strut put more preload on the shock and balanced the bike front to rear. It worked great but at the end of the day the sub frame was cracked and the air box boot had a large hole worn in it from the shock spring bowing against it. The tire was hitting the fender. Stock the tire never comes close. Lets move on to something else. All I can say is maybe try it first and dont put so much faith in these suspension guys. They are making a living at this. They want everyone to think this is a hard task to do and there is only one way etc. I wasted allot of money on the gimmicks early on and thats one reason I and a bunch of my long time riding freinds switched from jap to KTM .Remember the Europeans invented this sport. Every person I know from C rider to A rider instantly became a better rider when they rode a KTM even out of the box stock. There is allot of resistance from suspension companies, magazines and jap manufacturers about these bike. They are a big threat because they are so good. Other makers are on the japs heels TM, Husky,cannondale,etc. BLA BLA BLA Merry Cristmas. [/QUOTE]
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Dirt Bike Mods & Maintenance
Lowering The seat hight on my KTM
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