ChillLax chuck, i know they are minor issues, and i did talk to James. Me and my foil hat do have a lot of down time to get sticker placement just right... They were coming off anyways. Others people get it, if the visible exterior inspection reveals things that make ya go WTF, it makes a person wonder... Oil oozing out of my clicker for the next year doesn't excite me. I think it's obvious that i am not right around the corner from them and can't just run down to the shop. Now i got to get back to my programs...
As others have said this is not good.. These bikes have a proper torquing procedure to get the load on the bearings and to align the calipers to the disks. Look in your owners manual for that info on replacing the front wheel.
Not to take away the importance of this, but the great thing about the 990 front axle is it has two pinch bolts on each fork leg which also clamp the axle. You're very unlikely to have just gone down the road and had a catastrophic failure, which is part of the reason why it's designed like this. It might give you some comfort some day if it should ever happen again by accident.
What about the fact that the shock was shipped sitting on the lower fork tubes? Is that o.k. for him to be concerned about? Or the fact that oil went in the rebound tube? Is that o.k. not to be thrilled about? Sure the oil will work it's way out on it's own over time (and all over the bar area of the bike) but should it be there in the first place? This is not James' first set of forks (but I suspect this was a helper). I had SPS do my suspension and have been very happy with it. In fact when it arrived in the mail I was impressed with how well it was packaged for shipping from James to me. Woodchuck, I think you are right. You are clearly superior to all of us. With that kind of attitude you don't need to frequent this site anymore.
here's my 2 cents. SPS did my forks on my 04 950 adv. the results were very good but i didn't ride it off road much. i did ride it on a dirt road full of pot holes and washboard in Mexico. it worked well. i think springs alone would have been good. the real test was my off road bike...an 02 husaberg. really really good. i'm a competent old dirt bike rider....have had alot of dirt bikes and have had alot of suspension work done and this it the best suspension i have ridden. frankly i think the race tech stuff is real good too. SPS seems similar to me. i've also had james do some off the wall custom stuff too that worked out ok. with these shops you always run the risk of having someone do your stuff in a hurry. i detest shoddy workmanship i think the stickers are ugly...i take em off
the cap shouldn't have been loose no excuses... but if i understand.....you're talking about the cap on the left side....i don't think it does much. it's the pinch bolts that hold everything together
BTW as long as were taking about suspension..... it is uber critical to get the fork tubes parallel!!!!!!! motion pro makes a guage for this purpose. bouncing on the forks or finding the free center of the axle isn't good enough because the triple clamps are likely not machined perfect and cause the fork legs to be not parallel. this will cause the forks to bind as the move down into the travel. this can make a huge difference in the action of your forks!
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <wunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> <w:WrapTextWithPunct/> <w:UseAsianBreakRules/> <wontGrowAutofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:BrowserLevel>MicrosoftInternetExplorer4</w:BrowserLevel> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif][if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]-->Hi Dusty, I thought when we spoke the other day I had assuaged all your concerns and I apologize that you came away unsatisfied. I don't think I properly conveyed on the phone some of the reasons for some of your dissatisfaction and I wanted to explain that a bit: often bikes come in with base valves very tight and it takes some effort to remove them; because the nuts are soft aluminum they often show wear when removal is tough. Also sometimes when internal components are rusty or contain water we coat a bit of oil on the mechanism to prevent future rust. In shipping this could have leaked up and caused seeping. I hope that explains some of the issues more clearly, but regardless I am sorry that you are unhappy. It is very important to me that you feel satisfied. I do intend to maintain excellent quality so please do call and tell me if something is not right. Thanks, James
I must have missed this in our conversation... If the rest of my parts get here this week i can go for a ride on Saturday, and i am sure the excitement will be back.
My 950 SM suspension is slated to arrive at my Door Tuesday My shocks rebound adjuster was frozen when i bought the bike and i asked SPS to fix this for me during rebuild. They let me know that not only had moisture got in there and corroded the shock rebound (bike has never been off road or ridden if rain) they also found the fork rebound adjuster corroded and nearly frozen. When i spoke to them on the phone they mentioned that WP didn't lubricate these enough and that they add lubricant to the rebound ajusters to prevent them from corroding in future. Here is to hoping my SM stuff is in great condition and ready to install.
I'm in the process of getting my suspension done with SPS right now.. I called them last week and they sent me a box to ship the suspension in: When I opened the box I was surprised by what I found: 1) instructions 2) a return shipping label - pre filled out and ready to go.. even has my address as the return address in case shipping goes awry 3) bleeder screws! How cool is that? I was sweating trying to find my stock ones as I have no idea where they are... ...so I removed my bleeders loaded everything in the box (the foam was included as were the dividers) ...and dropped it off at UPS. So far I'm very impressed with their attention to detail.
This is great to see, and what I would have expected. It is also how my suspension was shipped back to me. Makes me kind of ashamed of the way I had packed my forks to send them in to James. Let's just say I packed and shipped in my own box...
Got mine back today (Thanks James) and all looks are pristine as it was when i removed it from my street only SM. All was packaged well and no hard parts were touching other hard parts. I had mine lowered, re-sprung and valved for sport street riding. Overall the forks are 10mm shorter and the shock is 13mm shorter. Also had the frozen rebound adjusters fixed on both forks and shock and added o-ring to each fork leg as a reference to how much travel is moving to allow fine tuning.
Mine is in transit back to me right now and should be here on Monday. James and I spoke on the phone last week and I think we decided to go with some heavier springs (70s) and some more aggressive off road valving he's been working on (as well as a raise to 265mm). I can't wait to see how it feels
I finally got my shock & forks sent off last Wednesday. I hope James or his minions have a sharp knife and some time & patience because they're packed like they're being shipped to Katmandu. So, what's the turnaround time on this tend to be?
I sent my forks off to SPS over the winter to have them revalved. I tried re-spring-ing myself which isn't that hard to do, until I found other problems inside, more than I wanted to tackle. I got them back in about 12 days in fine working order. No harmed nuts etc. There was a bit of oil on the rebound adjustment knob, but I wiped it up and it hasn't come back yet. I haven't got to put he new suspension through it's paces yet, but on some easy/moderate dirt and road riding so far it seems good. With the valving done and .58 springs the fork finally feels similar to the shock, I have proper static sag at both ends now . The only think I didn't like were the stickers. On my black bike, the colors/size was a bit obnoxious to me so next time I'll ask for no stickers. Another satisfied customer here.
I pre-asked that the stickers be put in the box instead of on the forks (since I have carbon tube covers, they'd just get covered anyways) and they arrived that way I put the sticker on the rear shock When you go from 210 to 265 this is the bag of bits you get back that have been replaced As for turnaround.. I think my suspension got there on a Monday and they did it on Wednesday.. it shipped out on Thursday I got it the following Monday.