Race Tech Install

Installed the Race Tech springs and Gold valve kit this weekend. Haven't had a chance to see how the bike feels. I'm still waiting for the Ohlins rear shock. That should be here this week.

The install was pretty straight forward. I did one fork first - kept the second all together just in case I needed a reference to look at! Which I did.

There were a couple of items that held up the progress.

1. The exact shim stacking on the compression valve. The Gold Valve body uses some of the stock shims. Well, I got a bit carried away during disassembly and didn't take carefully note of the shim stacking order on the stock valve. Not a big problem - since one fork was still all together. I just took that one apart and pulled out the valve body. Now I had the correct shim order.

2. A bleed hole had to be drilled in the Gold Valve - it's a damn small hole. Every try to find a 1.3mm drill bit? Not many places carry something that small - maybe a hobby shop. I got one at a specialty tool shop.

3. Figuring out what spring spacer height to use! The stock spring spacer is 50mm. The stock spring is 377mm long. The Race Tech spring is 343mm. Stock spring rate 0.74kg/mm. Race Tech spring rate 0.90kg/mm. Well, I went with a spacer of 75mm. I'm not sure if that's good but if the bike feels a bit sluggish on the corners, I'll go in there and cut off a bit more. It's any easy procedure, and I can do that with the forks on the bike.

4. Putting in the new oil seals. This operation is usually done with a collar-type slide hammer. Honda has a special tool, of course. I went the kludge route - got a 3' length of PVC pipe ( 1 1/2" diameter) and cut it in half - length wise - so I had two 3' half-shells. I placed them around the fork slider tube and just hammered the seals in place by pounding on the end of the pipe. Worked fine.

The forks are back on the bike and everything looks good. I'm really anxious to try them out.

Alex 98 VFR 800