Ain't that a cute little kitty-cat?
No, I just grabbed the first image I saw that said "pillow soft".
Went on yet another Pachaug rock pile ride yesterday (Saturday) with the re-revalved forks on the WR-250FP.
Result?
Much better at absorbing all of those pesky sharp bumps, so the base valve piston with the bigger oil flow ports combined with a reshuffling of the valving shims of the base valve worked as far as getting a more supple feel over the sharp bumps.
The fork now feels like it actually wants to move when I hit a sharp bump, and in this respect the fork is working OK.
There is a trade-off (as with most things in life and with dirt bikes) that I had anticipated, and that is if the fork is valved for a softer overall ride, it will sink down a bit further into the travel and ride at a lower height, making the front end of the bike feel lower.
Since I lowered the oil level 5mm last Monday morning (before the re-revalve), that is adding to the low front end feeling.
It is not such a problem that I can't ride the bike, but it does go against how I like my bikes to feel while in motion as it tends to take away from overall stability while at speed.
So, the first thing to do is to add fork oil and get the oil level back to the original 140mm level and see how that feels.
I added a bit of oil to each fork leg after I got home yesterday via the shortcut method of injecting it through the air bleeder hole in each fork cap.
While this in muuuuuuch faster than doing it the precise way of disassembling the front of the bike and actually measuring the oil level in each for leg, the trade-off (another one?) is that I'm simply guessing as to how much oil I actually added.
In a conservative move, I added just a tiny bit (a few CC of oil), so we'll see how it feels on today's Pachaug rock n' roll pile ride.
The actual ride was a decent one.
I felt OK and pulled some nice moved on the bike.
I hit a couple of bumps that I didn't see coming and had a couple of squirrelly moments, but nothing I didn't survive - I'll be aware of them, today.
There were several tree limbs down across the trail in places, and I wondered if they fell there all by themselves, or if some nature-walking yahoo did it.
I stopped and moved one of the smaller ones out of the way, so I did my good deed for the day.
It rained overnight so the ground is wet at the moment, and I'm going to wait a bit in order for some of that water to dry-up - those tree roots and rocks can be very slippery when they're all wet and shiny.
Edit:
I went for a Sunday Pachaug ride today, but I think it was done under an omen of some sort.
Just before I was to load the bike up into the truck, I realized I had a flat front tire.
Nice.
I was a slow leak so I didn't even know I had a pinched tube until the air hissssssssssed out over night and into the wee hours of the morning and into late morning and into departure time.
Good thing I keep spare tire tubes around.
Changing the tube cost about 45 minutes but I eventually made it out to the ol' Pachaug enduro loop.
It was there that I realized two more things:
1) The oil I added to the forks didn't make things better, but worse.
The forks now felt like there was too much oil in them, so the plush feel they had yesterday basically vanished and they felt more like their old selves.
God, and I only added a drop, too.
Touchy.
They now rode higher like I wanted them too, but I missed the plusher feel over the sharp bumps.
Jesus, talk about having to choose between the two.
During the week, I'll ONCE AGAIN remove the forks (for the LAST FUCKING TIME for a while, I do hope), lower the oil level to 145mm, and LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE!!!
If I want to experiment with ride height and front/rear balance, I'll do it with fork tube height and/or rear suspension settings.
2) I didn't feel as aggressive or ride the bike as well as yesterday.
Partly because the crummier-feeling forks bummed me out, partly because the bright sunshine reflecting off those pesky rocky trails fucked with my vision, and partly because that's just the mood I woke up in.
Sue me. ;)
I resorted to riding the bike pretty dang slowly since I didn't feel all that great and my vision wasn't as good as yesterday's cloudy day was, but it was better than crashing, Bucky.
I still did 55 miles and became more familiar still with the southern portion of the loop, so, it wasn't a total loss of a day.
On the bright side, the forecast weather for the coming jerk week is dry and sunny, and that will dry-up the rain water we got over the weekend.
That's always a good thing because there will be less mucky shit to deal with on the next ride.
Plus, I'll have the front suspension dialed-in to where it was yesterday, which was certainly ridable.
Until then,
-John
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