The last two days have not been nearly as productive as I'd planned. Despite having the week off for vacation, I'm still not getting much done. The good news is that so far today I've made some good progress
First, I picked up a BT020 120/60-17 for dirt cheap at a local dealership. Seems people don't like this tire but I love it. I had great luck running it on my FZ1. It was on sale so including mounting and balancing I only paid $160 CDN. You can see it's size compared to the old 70 series tire...should give me about 1/2" lowering and another 1/2" clearance to the rad.
Being very eager to get to the forks, I dove in. Finally I have all the tools, oil, instructions, and everything else I need. I decided to do them one at a time so I could compare them assembled.
I started by taking one apart:
Then set to work taking the insides apart. Without proper Suzuki tools, this is quite the task. The instructions from Schnitz were OK but could have been better. I admit I got pretty nervous when I had to use a pipe wrench to seperate a piece from the inner cartridge. Because everything is being done backwards due to a lack of tools, I had to make my own spring compression tool:
The reason the cartridge has to be taken appart is so that a small spacer can be put in to compliment the shortened main spacer...pretty smart:
The Completed cartridge:
The time had finally come, I could stand them next to each other and compare. I was pretty happy at this point.
Even though I have to pull the turbo and header off, I had to see what the bike was going to sit and look like back together.
Here's a shot showing ground clearance. Quite a bit by my estimation thanks to that lowered oil pan (no peanut gallery commentary required).