A tour of the shop I send forks to for re-chroming.
Step one is to grind off the old chrome down to bare steel:  This lathe is in operation, you can see the coolant flowing over the grinding wheel and the tube.

Step two is applying the new chrome by electroplating in this big tank: The balls floating on top help keep bad stuff from getting into the air.

After the new chrome is on the tube it must be ground down to the correct size and smoothness: This lathe is not operating, the tube has just come from the tank.

The final step is back on the first lathe for finishing.

Plan on a month (sometimes more) from the time your tubes leave my shop till I get them back. That’s a long time but the work they do here is great.

Want to keep the awning on your RV from getting lose and flapping in the wind?

What does a 200 pound drag racer with a 12 inch extended swing do to hold up the back of his CBR1000RR for street riding and drag racing? He sends his shock to Lindemann Engineering for a much stronger spring and a re-valve. Little did he know that he would get set up instructions so he can change the clickers for best street riding and best drive out of the hole at the strip. Hey Marcus, remember to change it back to the street setting when you leave the track!

Over at MotorBikeRacing.blogspot MG has another good post up about the cost of racing. He’s talking about the BS’ness of rules to make racing costs less when the Factories are involved.

How does this apply to club level racing? The same way. You are going to spend all the money you can/have. The smart think to do is, pick the bike and class or classes that you can afford to compete in. Not just on the money scale but also on riding and tuning skill scale.

Every time the rules are used to try to reduce costs we just spend the money on something else. That does not mean the rule makers can ignore the costs of stuff. It does mean that cost control is up to you.

You may think that paying me for your job is the end of our contract but to me it’s just the beginning of a path to wisdom. Hoge just got his CBR900RR back together after sending me his forks and shock for rebuild, valving and springs. As is common, he did a few other maintenance/improvements at the same time.

His e-mail is common, full of wonder at the magnitude of improvement and hints of a new understanding. The best term I’ve found to describe the newness you will experience is a massive increases of data.

The next step is playing with the clickers. Ride the bike with them open and closed to learn what they do. When you tried this with stock suspension the difference was too small to feel. This will not be the case now, be wise as you test.

Some data will not fit your suspension/chassis theory, your theory must change. Contact me with your questions, the path we travel is long and winding, full of twists and turns, wiggles and waggles, banked and off cambered challenges. Enjoy your ride in the sunshine.

When you get your forks back they will have a Travel O-Ring on each leg. They are more in the cool thing to do than the useful information category. They show how far the forks compress at maxim travel. Big bumps or hard braking.

This is nice to know but remember it only tells you the max travel, not the normal travel. Why two? After you make a change to can move one of them back to zero to see if your change makes you use less travel. If you use more travel they will both move.

If you don’t like them you can cut them off. Another way to do this is with a dry eraser marker. Just draw a line up the fork tube. The seal will wipe off the marker.

Max travel is noted on your invoice. Most forks don’t go all the way down.