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Front Suspension

PostPosted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 4:49 pm
by nikitino
The front suspension on my Country 500 is to stiff. I recently had the fork oil changed and filled the fork oil to the recommended Country fill amount which is a bit more than on the Tour model. I think these bikes have the same front forks if i'm not mistaken. Can i just remove some of the fork oil, like maybe down to the Tour level and obtain softer forks that way? Also i noticed that there are solid metal one inch or so spacers on top of the springs. Anyone know if these are a stock part of the forks or maybe previous owner added them? I would also like to score some progressive fork springs that would fit and work well but haven't found any. Any suggestions or comments appreciated.....

Re: Front Suspension

PostPosted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 9:20 pm
by comanche91
nikitino wrote:The front suspension on my Country 500 is to stiff. I recently had the fork oil changed and filled the fork oil to the recommended Country fill amount which is a bit more than on the Tour model. I think these bikes have the same front forks if i'm not mistaken. Can i just remove some of the fork oil, like maybe down to the Tour level and obtain softer forks that way? Also i noticed that there are solid metal one inch or so spacers on top of the springs. Anyone know if these are a stock part of the forks or maybe previous owner added them? I would also like to score some progressive fork springs that would fit and work well but haven't found any. Any suggestions or comments appreciated.....


I looked in my MZ500 parts manual and there were no spacers on top of the springs for all models. Image, so they must have been added. Wirth makes progressive fork springs for our bikes; see them all the time on Ebay Germany. I looking for a set a bit closer to home. :-D Also what viscosity fork oil are you using? My forks were too soft for my taste, and I swapped from SAE 5 oil to SAE 15 and now they are just right.

Re: Front Suspension

PostPosted: Thu Apr 22, 2010 11:20 pm
by nikitino
I used 15w so i might try to go down to 10w or 5w. I think i will take those spacers out first to see what that does. Good to know also that progressive springs are available.....probably not cheap though.