Been thinking- fork swap

[BrentMartell]

LOL, no worries, my pleasure. I agree with Glenn that the forks can be made to work for some folks and terrain applications. Let's try a couple things that do not cost you much $ and if all fails, we will start building a showa or WP front end.

[rgranger]

I am still confused how you can tune a fork with valves like these?

Is this something that GasGas should be made aware of, or is this normal? All of them on all the valves were like this or worse.

[GMP]

Thats not a port, its just a mid valve bleed hole that GasGas likes for some reason. Husky Zokes I've been into do not have this. But, if your going to drill a hole drill it right! Some guys have JB welded this shut.

In a nutshell: Up the rebound a lot, drop the compression, and add a light mid valve. Spring correctly or on the stiff side, and run very little preload. My biggest issue with the fork now is its a very focused rock setup, and blows through the travel when things get fast. I've been racing more hare scrambles than enduros so its more noticeable. I can live with it until my '12 gets here, and then I'll probably be trying to get that to work in the rocks. The point of the more advanced fork is it should be easier to come to a setup that works in a wider range of terrain.

[BrentMartell]

I think this is precisely why there is no longer a 45 on a gasgas.

[BrentMartell]

Oh and Glenn that is not the mid/rebound piston in the picture. That is the base valve. That is the compression side of the base valve as well. That closed off port is exactly what some, not all, of mine looked like. A couple were drilled out and the rest were closed off 50-65%. Very inconsistent. I drilled them out correctly and the whole system became much more smooth. With some lighter oil, shimming, etc they started to work in the slower terrain and speeds.

[MrBlah]

sniff even after reading this thread I still I love my revalved 45's, far better than anything else I've rode on in the east coast woods

I have not tried a 2012 gasgas yet

[GMP]

Your right, hard to tell with the closeup, but the rebound piston has a hole as well. That hole is in Husky Zokes, but the size has varied from 1 - 2 mm in GG Zokes over the years. There was a thread with pics awhile ago comparing an '05 GG Zoke with an '07.

[GMP]

Oring should have gave it away. Anyway, what that would do is just make the valving come into play sooner (at a lower speed) as there is less free bleed. Should have no effect at higher speeds. Its just a parallel path to the clicker.

[BrentMartell]

I think you may be confused or I am not understanding your thought. There are 4 holes per piston for the compression dampening. On the base valve those 4 holes are facing up. The oil is forced through those holes and into the stack. On rebound there is check plate and very open straight through ports. This picture is not showing a bleed hole in any manner. That is the port hole that leads to the shim stack and there a 4.

There is bleed hole on the rebound stack but there are also 4 ports just like the one pictured on that piston as well.

[BrentMartell]

I forgot to mention those holes on the rebound piston lead to the rebound stack.

http://s981.photobucket.com/albums/a.../2011%20zokes/

2011zokes is the password