35MM Front Shock Oddity

[efranzen]

I took the front shocks apart to clean and reseal. I found these two 2" spacers between the damper rod and main spring. Even odd, one side had the 2" spacer between the main spring and the top cap screw. It seems that this would just make the spring stiffer and has nothing to do with lowering.
Also, I do not show the 1/4" spacer that is one the damper rod. Is this factory item or did someone try some other modification.

Any thoughts?

 

[Kevin Werner]

https://650central.com/tech/mintonmods.htm
Read and understand this article please. Understand it for the timeframe it was written and that it suggests nearly $0.00 expense. When you have your fork tubes apart these mods are worth consideration. I did '81 forks to great ($0.00 expense) effect, then a year later, '77 forks. Each was different but rather old school damping rods. I never went to the new school but hear there are things called emulators. Do they emulate space travel or $2000/night escorts? I can't afford either. Cheers

 

[efranzen]

https://650central.com/tech/mintonmods.htm
Read and understand this article please. Understand it for the timeframe it was written and that it suggests nearly $0.00 expense. When you have your fork tubes apart these mods are worth consideration. I did '81 forks to great ($0.00 expense) effect, then a year later, '77 forks. Each was different but rather old school damping rods. I never went to the new school but hear there are things called emulators. Do they emulate space travel or $2000/night escorts? I can't afford either. CheersView attachment 365915

Thank you for the article. I already 4 holes at the bottom of the damper, I'll add the second at the top. The shocks already have air caps, so there's that.
I'll re-assemble without the 2" space, but leave the 1/4" lowering spacers and see how it rides.

 

[Kevin Werner]

Thank you for the article. I already 4 holes at the bottom of the damper, I'll add the second at the top. The shocks already have air caps, so there's that.
I'll re-assemble without the 2" space, but leave the 1/4" lowering spacers and see how it rides.

Measure your springs. My experience...Different years have different spring lengths. The progressive wound replacement springs from ( Mikes XS, XS650,com?) measure around 320 mm so I ditched the spacers in my '77. I do not remember where my replacement springs came from. The stock springs in the 81 forks measure around 285 mm and respond nicely to 2" spacers.

 

[5twins]

Huh? Yes, do measure your springs because stock spring lengths vary, but they're much longer than Kevin says .......

The longer '78-on springs had no spacers fitted, just the adjustable cap. But, being much longer than the plain cap, it acted like an additional preload spacer. And I think adding 2" spacers would be too much. You can safely add up to 1" spacers and through experimenting on mine, I found about 3/4" to be ideal (13/16" actually). ........

Yes, there were mistakes in the fork section of the Minton Mods. See my posts in this thread for corrections .......

https://www.xs650.com/threads/minton-mod-observations.25588/

 

[Kevin Werner]

Huh? Yes, do measure your springs because stock spring lengths vary, but they're much longer than Kevin says .......

Thanks, memory is the 2ndthing to fail....

 

[efranzen]

I took apart another set of forks I had and found that the tube is two inches shorter than the ones on my bike. Seems like someone put longer ones on and then used the two inch spacers to make up for the extra length.

I will use the short tubes without the spacers for now.

 

[gggGary]

Ahso two over that prolly answers all the questions. I'll put money on those are Forking by frank tubes.
There's faint label on the FBF tubes and I find the chrome worn off at the top bushing every fricking time.