Marzocchi setup help - 08' EC250

[nick790]

Marzocchi's.

[iancp5]

Originally Posted by nick790

Marzocchi's.

Hmm usually lots of advice on those. Have you searched old threads?

[nick790]

I have, but I'm a bit of a novis at this so I thought I'd ask some questions first to see what people recomend.

[iancp5]

Originally Posted by nick790

I have, but I'm a bit of a novis at this so I thought I'd ask some questions first to see what people recomend.

How heavy are you?
You should be able to get a decent setup without re-valving but that's coming from someone of 108Kg (250 lb). Could be a different story if you're half that.

I run slightly lower rate springs (0.45) than recommended for my weight & lower compression damping on the clickers but with standard air gap & Putoline 7.5 oil. This seems to work quite well for me. Previously I ran 0.48 springs which were too hard, possibly mimicking your situation, I went to 120mm air gap and compression wound completely off and it was still a tad too hard. My (limited) experience with bikes has been that you really must find the correct spring rates for you before anything else and it makes an enormous difference. Seems to apply to road bikes too. Riding style comes into it too. I think I tend to ride the back too much and skim the front which is maybe why I need light fork springs. Probably tied into my size at 6'3" I end up pushing myself too far back on the seat.

[nick790]

I'm about 200lb in full gear, dont know what that is in Kg?

I'm also quite tall and ride the back wheel a fair bit, I'm coming off a 450 4stroke and obviously the extra waight made the suspension work a little easyer. I just dont seem to be getting the full travel of the fork. I dont think it's to hard overall, just too hard/harsh at the top on it's travel.

The other thing is the rebound seems to be very fast, or maybe thats just the way it seems, but if I incress the rebound damping it does'nt seem to make much difference. Saying that would I notice it staticly by pushing the front forks? but I also could'nt notice much difference when riding.

I think incressing the air gap will help alot, but whils I'm in there I could try some other things as well? Obviously I can alway return things to standard if I dont like it.

[stay_upright]

I woudl try increasing the air gap first then adjust the compression shims. (because changing the air gap is very easy)

Unless changing oil is a known, good mod specifically for the sachs forks (which i doubt) do not change the oil viscosity. The same oil controls compression and rebound so a lighter oil will reduce compression but also rebound. The Marzocchis have an issue where too little rebound feels like too much compression - the sachs may be similar so would not advise an oil change, you will not know what's wrong and nothing will be stock anymore.

I adjusted my compression shim stack by I would guess making it 50% more flexible and the results were brilliant (all be it with possibly wrong springs) I was looking for better performance in areas you mention.

Since I don't know what the stock compression shim stack is for the Sachs I can't really suggest one - removing one of the shims will help but may not have enough effect depending on how many shims are there to start with?

[nick790]

Originally Posted by stay_upright

I woudl try increasing the air gap first then adjust the compression shims. (because changing the air gap is very easy)

Unless changing oil is a known, good mod specifically for the sachs forks (which i doubt) do not change the oil viscosity. The same oil controls compression and rebound so a lighter oil will reduce compression but also rebound. The Marzocchis have an issue where too little rebound feels like too much compression - the sachs may be similar so would not advise an oil change, you will not know what's wrong and nothing will be stock anymore.

I adjusted my compression shim stack by I would guess making it 50% more flexible and the results were brilliant (all be it with possibly wrong springs) I was looking for better performance in areas you mention.

Since I don't know what the stock compression shim stack is for the Sachs I can't really suggest one - removing one of the shims will help but may not have enough effect depending on how many shims are there to start with?

Thanks, have you changer shim stacks before? if so where did you start?

[stay_upright]

I've changed compression and rebound shims on this 05 ec300 and compression stacks on a 99 KTM200 with conventional marzocchi's.

Basically take your forks to bits - there are some excellent you tube videos on this you will need to make a bit of a tool up to hold one part of the innards while you unscrwe another part - it's not too difficult to do once you can see what you want to do.

Once you can look at the shim stacks of your fork understand where the oil goes when your forks hit a bump so then you will see how the shim stacks work. Next step is to make the stack softer, my approach has always been to make the compression very soft and then if I need to stiffen it up again. The reason for this is it would help me understand the effect of the changes but in both cases I never needed to stiffen up the shim stacks again.

My stock base (compression) stack was
21
11
19
17
11
16
15
14
13

And I changed to
21
11
11
19
12
13 shims after this do not add to the stiffness of teh stack really I just stored them here you could almost ignore them.
14
15
16
17

This stack is much much softer. - if you wanted to use something as soft as this is upto you and depends on what you're looking for and your speed/weight etc. ...

[nick790]

I cant find much on youtube?

[nick790]

Where can I buy shims in the uk?