There's not a whole lot that you can do except keep up on the oil changes and use quality oil. The engines that I have seen with bad second gears have been Northern California bikes where the average riding speed is not that fast (tighter trails) so second gear get's most of the use. Southern California bikes (open desert) I see have bad third gears due to higher average speeds. The gears that have been pictured are the countershaft gears and are smaller and have fewer teeth so they get a lot of wear. The gear on the main shaft is bigger so it has more teeth but it gets damaged anyway from the small gear. The gears have to be swapped in pairs.
Ahh, that explains why nothing seemed to be retaining the needle on the bottom end. Is the replacement nut the same design as for fixing all shock shafts that have accidentally had the peening removed, or something unique to the 600? What's the best place to order one of the nuts?
That's a good idea. It's nonpermanent to the forks, and the altered springs would be easily swappable between sets of forks. I'm half way through my first attempt at lowering a set and have recut the spring seat circlip's groove on the cartridge body. I guess that doesn't weaken things any more than the factory groove.
The nuts are for all Showa shock applications. It is designed to be a "repair" part for improperly ground shock shafts. I get mine from Race Tech Suspension. The part number is SPSN 12125RN and they retail for $10.
Plenty of tuners recut the circlip's groove without issues but I was actually riding with a guy a few years back that had the work done by a big suspension tuner and while riding the circlip popped out of it's groove causing the fork to lose all spring preload/tension.
Do a search. Tons of guys have done the swap because the shock is a direct bolt on but it's slightly shorter which can be fixed internally.
I just checked a couple of shocks in the garage. The XR and XRL shock body have the same OD and length. I'm thinking that the XR body has a thicker wall than the XRL which is why the different valve diameter.
Yea the body walls are thinner to accommodate the 46mm piston (2mm larger than the xr600 44mm). The seal head retaining circlip grove is also deeper in the body and the shock shaft and seal head are a little different which is why the L shock is a little shorter. The high speed valving in the compression adjuster is also quite different. The xr600 uses a pop off valve that opens when the shock pressure in the body rises to fast and overwhelm the low speed bleed. The 650l uses a 20mm piston with a shim stack to control the pressure when it over whelms the low speed bleed. It's actually pretty cool.
I have a bit of a problem guys. I'm working on a XR600 that I am restoring and I have found that the side stand frame mount is missing. Anyone have a dead frame that this can be harvested from?
its just a small tab welded to the frame, they often break off from kick starting while the bike is on the kickstand just have someone weld a small peice of metal to drill a whole in and slap a kickstand on
The kickstand / spring / frame mount assembly are fairly universal. I have an XRL (I think) assembly welded to a CR250 frame. You could get one from a wide range of Honda models. Look for one that doesn't have too much elogation wear in the tab's pivot hole. The cross bolt wears too, but can be easily replaced.
Good info. So the heighten the XRL shock, the circlip groove is recut? Does the seal head get modified? Any changes to the shaft, or can it be swapped for an XR6 one? The XRL compression adjuster sounds to be a more progressive damping design. I wonder if a high and low speed adjuster can be retrofitted, such as from a CRF or later CR.
The easiest way to add length to the XRL shock is by adding a spacer under the top out plate. The spacer has to have a 12mm ID and no larger than a 16mm OD. That allows the top out plate/washer to sit higher on the shaft and therefore the shock must extend further in order to contact the top out rubber built into the seal head. Make since? I can take some pictures if you're really interested. I've also machined the top out plate to have the spacer "built in". I was in the process of trying to do some shaft swaps from XR-XRL but people want WAY to much money for their old XRL shocks.
The XRL adjuster bolts right into the XR body but any high speed adjustments would have to be made by removing the adjuster from the shock and changing shim configuration. Fitting a CRF style adjuster would be pretty trick but the OD of the CRF adjuster is way larger than the XR/XRL and the shock body doesn't have the room for machining the needed metal out of it. I almost got my hands on a old WP shock that was made for the XR in Scott Summers time. I was going to pull it down and see if I could find the parts needed from the current WP shocks to reproduce it but the guy didn't want to part with the shock
So basically the spacer relocates the necked in shoulder part of the shaft upward, pushing the complete piston and valving assembly upward on the shaft, effectively creating a longer shock shaft. That's a good idea. A guess the spacer height is limited by the thread engagement of the top nut. How much of the needed increased length and travel can you get? To further increase down travel, maybe the lower plane of the seal head, where it contacts the retainer circlip, could have the shoulder relocated backward. That would be easier and stronger than relocating the clip groove in the shock body. I notice that the XRL shock springs are noticably longer than 600R springs, so hopefully with increased travel there's no worry of too little spring tension at full extension. Yeah, used 600R and XRL shocks seem crazy expensive.
