Ok, I think I have found the source of the folk knock. After my thread http://www.cafehusky.com/threads/front-folks-to-stiff-stripped-down-and-discovered.81426/ my folks where much better but still a little stiff for my liking. Not happy with this I pulled them out again to see if I could improve them. The first thing I notice is my right folk has stiction...push it in and on return it will "hold" and then rebound. This got me scratching my head, why?? and why the right folk more so?? As well as this I notice a very slight tight spot about 50mm down. In the pics below you can see there are two black circles on my right cylinder and this coincides with the tight spot. A bit of hand reaming (see below) and the tight spot is now gone, great!. But with the springs out of the Stanchions theres still stiction on "change of direction"..why?? Well its pretty simple.....see the shiny spot (looks black in the picture) on my right Stanchion (caused by grit and so forth getting caught under the dust seal) on the picture below....I have been told this is no good and to get a Scotchbrite and rub it off using a helical motion. So I did just that to the entire working surface and the stiction reduce straight away, great!. The next thing I did was add a some folk oil and lithium grease and behind the dust seal and viloa, the stiction is now gone! I repeated this on my left folk and it has made a huge difference to the responsiveness of my folks. The real good thing about this is you can do all of this on the bike. 1. Remove the stone guards 2. Place bike on center stand 3. Scotchbrite both Stauchions and clean off 4. Slide dust seal down (I used a piece of Pine timber with a square edge which wont bruise or damage anything) behind the outer seal edge and tapped it down gently. 5. Add a few drops of folk oil behind the dust seal and reset the dust seal. Our folks are just to dry, now yours should feel better and if like mine the knocking should have gone.
I've just converted my forks to have both compression & re-bound damping in each leg Working with Terry Hay at Shock Treatment Softer front end with better feel, much easier on the wrists & it's nice to be able to feel the front tyre grip Fully 100% recommend, rather than fit YZ or other forks
Flip one piston on the rebound side, one piston on the compression side, make-up a shunk-on tube to cover the holes in the rebound tube, drill new holes in the rebound tube to match the compressionside, then drill 2 by 1.00mm holes to match the others, these act to allow small fork movements, shorten the lower bolt by 5.00mm to allow it to pull down the compression valve Also, vents any air in the forks, use 5w oil I also have additional 10.00mm preload to compensate for the Safari tank weight I prefer quite soft front suspension with minimum rebound damping possible
Hello from Athens. I had exactly the same problem. I try to find a solution myself. Nothing! 3 mechanics trying to find the problem. Nothing! I took my bike to local Husky distributor and the disassembly my front forks. They did not find anything wrong. After one month a friend of me find the problem. This noise does not come from the suspension!!! Check the frame behind the radiator. There are 2 bolts with 13 head connecting the frame with the subframe. Find a long tool and someone to put a 13teen key from the other side. Tight these bolts a little bit hard . You will discover that they are loose. Magic ! the noise stops. So simple.
bolt 9 and nut 11. There are actually two each and the drawing is wrong - that bolt should go through the upper hole in the frame. They are a little difficult to reach but you can tighten them without removing anything. All those frame bolts and nuts need to be checked and tightened as they all seem to be a little loose out of the factory.
I think he is talking about number 9 in this photo. These would be the two bolts directly behind the radiator. I checked mine and they are hard to get to because my canister is blocking access from the right side. I could get a crows foot on the bottom bolt from the left side and it turned pretty easy. When I have more time I will tear it down a bit to get better access and properly tighten them.
I think High5 might have found that bolt loose too. I remember checking mine early on and it was tight as hell.
The nuts used by the factory (#11 in earlier diagram) are elliptical offset nuts, also known as oval lock nuts. They’re actually oval shaped and deform to the round thread of the bolt when tightened. I’ve heard these are one-use only and will not properly torque down once tightened and loosened. I didn’t feel like going through the trouble of ordering replacements through the dealership after I removed the oval nuts for the cannisterectomy, so I just went to Home Depot and bought two regular nuts of the same size and tightened them both down on the same bolt to act as a jam nut. Hasn’t loosened since.
Ok, I took off the nuts on these two bolts when I removed the cannister a long time ago and I used the same nuts to put everything back together. Mine are still perfectly tight and.....the forks still knock like they always did. My point is......You do not need to 'replace' these nuts because they are some kind of special oval shape, secondly the 'knock' on my bike is in the forks not the frame.
I agree Charlie, in fact I have yet to met a TR650 owner who has not got the same 'knock' in the forks, it seems to be there regardless of the age or mileage. Mine did it from almost new and I have never done anything about it and I have no plans to do anything unless it gets worse or something more serious happens.
"Flip one piston on the rebound side, one piston on the compression side, make-up a shunk-on tube to cover the holes in the rebound tube, drill new holes in the rebound tube to match the compression side, then drill 2 by 1.00mm holes to match the others, these act to allow small fork movements, shorten the lower bolt by 5.00mm to allow it to pull down the compression valve Also, vents any air in the forks, use 5w oil I also have additional 10.00mm preload to compensate for the Safari tank weight I prefer quite soft front suspension with minimum rebound damping possible" Engineerk9, There is a Race Tech guy here in Tucson. Do you think that the above is enough for an experienced suspension tech to duplicate your modifications? I am going to take my forks to him soon for seal replacement, service, etc., and it would be terrific to get something more done to help the forks. I also prefer a plush suspension. If this works, then on to the shock, which I should do NOW as the bike is apart for the airbox filter frame mod. Easy to get to the top shock mount bolt now.
He Ken, I took my Terra up to him a couple years back and we discussed the possible yami fork conversion. This flipping pistons and keeping stock forks is interesting and I'm sure he can do it.
I just dropped my rear shock off at my tuner. He wants to see what he can do with it. Just a warning. The upper shock bolt was not tight. I was shocked to find the bolt loose.
