Getting KYB forks running sweet on my Beta

[Motumatai]

Owning a 2014 Beta RR300 racing has become a liberatuing experience. I came off 30 odd years riding 4 strokes. Prior to that it was a decade on 2 stroke road bikes, which somehow I managed to survive.
My bike came with Marzochi 48mm forks, which turn out to have been made when Marzocchi was having a QC blank moment. This quickly saw to their demise. A pity, since the forks were actually brilliant. Just some parts were made of cheese and didn't hold up particularly well. And now of course parts are almost impossible to get ( at a reasonable price).

So last year I took a strong interest in MArty Moose's thread on fitting KYB SSS forks to a Beta. I ended up picking up some KYB SSS's off a 2009 YZ 250, and was lucky enough to see Yrocmoto's POW 106 up for sale, so grabbed it quick to save hassle trying to buy it from an overseas shop.

Then followed almost a year with no progress, and me being able to do fork oil changes to my Zokes blindfolded. Man they were good for a few hours, but the oil was silver/black in 5-10 hours.The damage had gone past repair stage for the upper stanchions, and despite me doing a re hard anodising of the inner cartridges at 80 hours, they still swap oil between the two so the inner cartridges still get gooed up with the rubbish in the outer chamber oil..

Finally I had a mate help fix the electrical issue with my lathe, and I was able to mount the forks in and turn them down to suit the Beta tripples. Next was mounting up the Beta front wheel on the Yamie axle and measuring up what sized spacers I needed to machine, to get the front wheel sitting central. As others have said, getting the wheel central is all about the thickness of the brake side spacer. The non brake side has nothing to do with centralising the wheel. But the non brake side spacer thickness determines how far through the forks the axle threads poke out, for the axle nut to do up on.

That done the forks got new O rings and fork seals/bushings, and 340mls of 5 wt oil.

Then two days riding over pretty gnarly terrain (my favorite:)) av speed 5.6kph over a 5 hour circuit.

After a bit of twiddling with comp and rebound settings, I can confirm that these forks did indeed start life on a MX machine!. Mid stroke and big fast hits they soak up beautifully. But its when riding slow over small hard lumps that I need to remedy. There's just no plushness to them. I jump on a mates XR400 to move stock around the paddocks and the XR's bog standard non adjustable forks soak up those slow small lumpy bumps like they are not there. OK, push the XR any quicker and it quickly gets well beyond their limited capability.

But I would love to have the best of both worlds. Butter smooth over those small hard lump when going slow, but still have the amazing capability the SSS's exhibit when pushed faster and harder.

I'm nudging 60, and don't enjoy racing fast on wide open tracks any more. Whoops do nothing for me. But I love exploring completely off track. Having to take the odd jump off a 6 foot bank, or picking my way up rough overgrown rocky ridges, with that 300 growling away underneath me, tractoring away with the Tubliss running 4psi on the biggest S12 I can buy:)

Any thoughts on what I need to do to the SSS's to get the best out of them??? All ideas appreciated.

[SamanBN]

The same here, so i tried some re-valve withe great results..
/ok, first check oil height, clickers etc.., and check, if everything inside the forks works like it should/

Start simply.. look here:
https://thumpertalk.com/forums/topic/11 ... e/?page=47

i tried just something like this with BV, and it works pretty well:
important is less Base shims (32x.11) and smaller clamp (14x.15 x2) and soft or no bleed stack

You can do this by removing bars, loosening the upper triple clamps and then while holding the cartridge nut, you can remove the base valve of the forks (you need some tools for this). By reassembling, add some oil (20-30ml) in cartridges and after rebuild, while first ride, do some bottoming for bleeding the cartridges.
It is not the best/or right/, but the simplest method.

mine looks like this:
Base Valve:
Piston
32x.11 (x12)
30x.11
28x.11
26x.11
24x.11
22x.11
20x.11
18x.11
16x.10
14x.15 (x2)

Bleed stack
18x.11
14x.11
11x.25 (x1)
22x.11 (x2)

[Hyde]

If you want the best of both world the JBI spring perches turn most any CC fork in to a stunning rock fork and still take big hits, they allow you to run much less oil.

http://www.ridejbi.com/jbi-pro-perch/