45mm Zoke performance

[toolmaker]

I went out last weekend for the first ride on my 11 250 with the zoke-Ohlins suspension. The shock seems to be OK. Nothing special, but works as well as the shock on my 300 KTM. The front is another story. These are the worst performing forks I have ridden on in 25 years. I'm not posting on here to bag on GG in any way at all. I am just being honest and looking for advice on what to do to make them ride able.

The problem seems to be that they blow right through the stroke on compression and then feel really harsh. Rebound seems to be nonexistent. The front wheel won't stick to the ground for accurate steering in the tight woods I ride. I'm sawing the bars back and forth all the time to maintain control because the wheel is skipping off the ground.

I'm a 200lbs "A" level enduro rider riding mostly tight woods. I replaced the springs with .45s before I rode the bike. I've turned clickers with not a lot of improvement. Any insight for a cure would be welcomed.

[gasgasman]

I rode my 2011 Six Days 250 today for the first time.
I thought my 45mm forks actually worked better than the 50mm forks on my 2007 bike.
My rebound is set at 16 clicks out and the compression is at 18 clicks out.

[moto9]

It took me about 6 months to get the forks working good.

This is what I think,
1) sprung too soft
2) valved to stiff on the base valve
3) valved to light on the rebound
4) mid valve is too stiff and depending on the type of riding needs the float re-set.
5) oil level too high.

There is nothing that can be done with the clickers, it's either live with the ride (which would be a shame) or spend the $$ for a proper respring and valving.

[GMP]

Do a search, much info here.

[mrkartoom]

I've heard from many that the Zokes really need time to be broken in before you know what you've got. Based on that I wouldn't do any major changes to them until then.

The zokes on my Husky lived up to that, but I still had to send them off. They had different issues, but were really bad.

[BrentMartell]

Yeppers, worst forks I have ever ridden. GMP said there is a lot of info, and there is now. I have about 700 miles on this bike now and am still chasing down issues, however, they are much closer to what I expect or like. I think with 1 more re-shim of the rebound stack I will have control of the rebound dampening. These forks don't have a mid valve stack, just a blow off valve, and a stack has now been added. I think if a person was riding super slow tight woods and their speed was not all that high they could live with the forks in stock form. However, my pistons were not drilled out properly and that caused a lot of my initial problems.

I am not sure what I am going to do with the shock yet. Initially the forks sucked so bad the shock was good. However, I have the forks working well enough that the shock is starting to indicate I need to make improvements. I rode 3 KTM's and a Honda back to back with the my GG this weekend while testing. All of the bikes shocks felt better than my ohlins. The forks are close.

[Robby45]

I just got my forks back from my suspention guy. He said (and I'll be showing my ignorance here in translation) that they are set up like old school motoocross forks that relied on orifice damping. He machined some holes in the spring seat and made some type of new part that replaced the black cylinder(?) in the forks, modified the compression stack and set the oil level at 130mm. Stock springs were okay for me at 178 lbs.

Beforehand, I wasn't using the last 3" of travel and thought the fork was very plush at the top of the stoke and way harsh towards the bottom.

After getting them back I am using most all the travel and they feel much more balanced across different terrain. They don't try to tuck as much under hard braking. I'd call it a 50% improvement over stock. Need to ride it more to see if any more tuning is needed. I've pretty happy with them for now after the changes.