I wanted to take a few minutes and share with you the suspension work I did on my Z this week end. Over the past year I have been finding that my front suspension was terrible. I kept feeling that my front wheel was breaking loose on me in turns and also my ride was very very stiff. I decided to upgrade my fork springs. Acutally the parts guy at the local Kawi store recommended I go with racetech shocks and cartriges. Thinking I would take things one step at at time I just went with springs. I went with 0.95kg springs (I weigh 190 LBS).

Swaping out the springs is pretty easy. The only tricky part is compressing the spring down to access the lock nut on the bottom of the shock cap. I though I could just simply suck a bit of oil out and top it up with fresh oil but when I proceeded to do this I found the oil to be BLACK and terrible. I have 66 000km on my bike (about 45 000 miles) so I guess it was time to get it out of there. I decided to remove the forks completly from the tripple trees and drain them out. Racetech gives you these instructions that are pretty much usless for even somone who has mechanical savy. I had a few buddies over and they helped me set the sag once I was all done.

After riding the bike I find that it rides a lot smoother over bumps and it holds a lot better in the curves. I think I should have gone with cartriges as well as the springs but this will do till next year.

NOW I think I will change the spring in the back as well.

What weight fork oil did you use ?

INTHERED

10w

I had my rear shock revalved and resprung by racetech.

The stock rear spring is WAY too stiff, according to the tech guys at the store it's good for someone 250lbs +. Switching just the spring should make a huge difference.

I had a gold valve dropped into mine as well and it feels great.

45k miles w/o changing the fork oil

I think the manual says 12k mi intervals.