Minor Winter Project - installing suspension worth 1/3 of the bike
 

Yes, I've gone completely insane. Over the Winter I'll be swapping out the stock bits, on my ER6n, for aftermarket. The forks aren't bad for what they are; ancient damper rod design. They aren't adjustable for even preload though. The shock, on the other hand, is absolute shite; preload-only adjustable and absolutely no feedback.

So I'm going the whole hog. The fork internals are being replaced by a custom gas-charged cartridge kit from Bitubo, in Italy. Landed cost is under $800.00 for something that I can just rip out the damper rod assembly, and replace it with new internals.

For the shock, I'm trying something different. Shocks for the ER6n/Ninja 650R seem to be as scarce as hens' teeth, with the only "big name" shock I could find being a rebound and preload adjustable Ohlins. I bought an Elka (great company to deal with, by the way), but it didn't fit. Penske, who I've dealt with before, said that they have a shock for the Ninja 650R but not the ER6n. THE STOCK SHOCK IS IDENTICAL! They didn't respond, when I told them that. There's goes THAT sale. So it's a Hyperpro "3D" shock for me. It's pricey, at maybe $1200 total, and overkill for my application, as it has both high and low speed damping adjustment. At least they replied to me.

Should have all the bits in a couple of weeks.

Gas-charged cartridge kit? I haven't heard of this before. Didn't think any forks were gas-charged, with the exception of Ohlins Superbike forks

They've become fairly popular.

A friend has Traxxion Dynamic's AK-20 gas charged forks in his GSXR and loves them.

Yup, several companies are doing them now. The Bitubo kit should bring my up to essentially equivalent performance to stock RSU cartridge forks, with an appropriate spring. It's pretty much entry level for this sort of thing.

http://database.photozac2.com/bitubo...ridge%20&-Find

They do a more upscale kit, but that's meant for bikes that are already cartridge.

http://database.photozac2.com/bitubo...artridge&-Find

Traxxion will rebuild forks to cartridge, but they had never done a ER before and took a while to get back to me. By the time that they did, saying that they'd make my ER their first, I had already ordered the Bitubo setup.

WP does the pressurized fork setup also (2nd from the bottom).

http://www.wpsuspension.com/products/Race.php

Schweeeet

This is the shock: http://www.hyperprousa.com/catalog.php?cat=Shocks#sd5

Don't know what I'm going to do with both high and low speed damping. I can barely wrap my head around getting compression, rebound, and preload correct.

After this I'll have to make some custom brackets for the Givi windscreen that I bought because the stock brackets are meant for a 2006 ER, but I've got a 2009. The headlight surround is obviously larger on the 2009 and it wasn't worth the trouble of trying to send the damned thing back. I might also add some brush guards, for protection from the cold. There are a few nice ones out there, that only require attachment to the handlebars, and not the bar ends.

Sounds sexy. Post some pics of this shiz when it arrives. Post haste.

That's the plan. At the very least, I'll have to take some pictures to make sure that I get things put back together correctly. Quite frankly, I think that making the windscreen brackets is going to be the toughest part :lol:

One of the writers at the online mag, that sometimes uses my racing shots, suggested that I should take plenty of shots while doing the fork setup, because they might want to do a story on it.

Thats pretty damn cool.