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Spongy front forks

1K views 5 replies 5 participants last post by  AWJDThumper 
#1 ·
Had my Dakar 07 for a few months now and am very pleased with it. The only niggles I have are that the gearbox is a bit on the clunky side. The bike has covered 19000 miles is this normal?

Also the forks are very soft and dive quite a bit on braking, has anyone changed their forks to a more contemporary upside down set up?

Thanks again for the help on previous minor issues there is clearly a lot of knowledge and helpful guys contriuting to the Forum

Cheers.
 
#2 ·
" the gearbox is a bit on the clunky side"
they are quite agricultural , check clutch is fully operating , IE full travel of arm on top of gearbox, little bit of play in cable, for when steering on full lock, not starting to disengage , when clutch released, arm fitted correctly? 90degrees max arm to cable ,

"forks soft and dive on braking"
check you have decent oil in forks, correct grade, , not watered down, dampens fork movement, if ok, then look at springs- worn? Aftermarket , stiffer springs are available, after that may be look at more pricey option, replacing whole forks ?

Check FAQ's here for more info on above points, we have lot of knowledge lodged here and are pretty helpful


 
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#3 ·
The F650GS gearbox is not the smoothest in the world I wouldn't describe mine as being particularly clunky in use. One reason for clunkiness might be clutch drag which would probably be noticeable while trying to select neutral at a standstill. If you can select neutral easily then you probably aren't suffering from clutch drag.

I would definitely change the fork oil first to see whether that cures the problem - I put in 10W fork oil in mine. If you're going to take the forks out of the yokes anyway then you might as well check you've got standard springs in at the same time.
 
#4 ·
You can try stiffer springs, heavier oil and cartridge emulators. All will make them marginally better.

You can change to USD forks. Easy route is KYB from a YZ. Slightly harder route is WP forks from KTM. Loads of info over on ADVrider including a couple of huge threads on the subject. Ratel Engineering (Aquatic) makes a kit if you decide on the KYB route.
 
#6 ·
I recently met up with someone who had a Dakar with USD forks fitted by the PO which were very impressive to look at. There's always been a bit of doubt regarding how strong the standard forks are but these USD forks look the business in terms of taking a lot of punishment. However, probably not cheap to fit given that you need new yokes among other things:think:
 
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