Quote:
Originally Posted by alex.s
john, if you like riding the girl fast, check out some of the suspension upgrades. there's quite a variety of upgrades ranging from cheap and free to ...well you know. the stock springs and damping are set for soft and light road riding for a small asian girl, so if you push the bike at all you wind up bottoming out. for free you can add preload with some spacers. proper rated sonic springs are $80 for the forks or racetech springs for $100, fork oil is nice and cheap and you can throw on a resprung gsxr used shock on the rear for pretty cheap. or get a custom GS-3 from racetech thats designed for the bike (like $400). you can get dual-speed valve kits for the forks (they call them gold-valve emulators) for pretty cheap. about $150 i think. no external adjustment but once you get it set right you dont really need to change it unless you change something drastic. if you want to get really fancy they make ohlins dropin cartridge kits for about $800 or you could even swap to upside-down forks like the rs250 forks (fit fine with stock body work) or something like zx forks (require afteermarket or modified bodywork)
definitely play with the carbs, the bikes come lean from the factory for emissions.
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Thanks for the reply Alex!
I have been reading through the performance sections. (so much to catch up on)
I'm 6'1" 195 so I know some suspension work will be necessary, the emulators are real popular with the vintage racers. Front springs will be an upgrade also. I had no idea the Gixxer shock was that semi-easy of an upgrade. That's why I love the boards, no re-inventing the wheel.
I really need to get her up on the mountain to get a baseline for what I will be needing. It's not a fast road, kinda like the Dragon. And I may do a track day, just to see how she works there, I'm thinking you can't push the stock tires that hard.
I am at 5000ft (which kills HP, but everyone has the same disadvantage) but richens things up, as I don't even need the choke to start up. But she does pop a lot on decel. The carbs haven't been touched, so I need to pull em and remove the fuel screw caps and fiddle a bit. I might even check and see about throwing on some VM's, I have a bunch in all sizes.
Anyone that has had a racing 2 stroke knows carbs, and how often you have to jet. I get a kick out of all the talk about FI, and how great it is, or would be to have. Being from the era of working on bikes, I don't see the need, as it's actually half the fun for me to wrench on bikes.
I'll throw on the GO PRO when I head up the mountain so you guys can see what it's like, and how a 250 runs (or doesn't) at almost 11,000 ft....lol.