• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

TE 511 Fork Preload & Oil Amount?

Cosmokenney

Cosmokenney

Husqvarna
Pro Class
I just put in some heavier RaceTech springs on my '13 TE 511. They were a little shorter than the stock and are not under much load when the cap is bolted back on. I also have a fair amount of sag. I've also noticed a lot of brake dive. I'm wondering how to set the preload on these forks?? Race tech sent some little spacers, but I can't figure out where they go.

While in there, I decided to pour out the old oil. I measured almost exactly 450 Ml per leg. So I put 450 Ml back in. But I think the manual calls for 620 Ml.

I have no idea what I'm doing. Any help would be appreciated!
 
Sorry, can't help with the springs, but I run an extra 20mm oil height over standard to help with bottoming late in the stroke on the 449.

With your oil volume, did you stroke the fork while draining? There may have been some oil left in there....
 
Dangermouse449 said:
Sorry, can't help with the springs, but I run an extra 20mm oil height over standard to help with bottoming late in the stroke on the 449.

With your oil volume, did you stroke the fork while draining? There may have been some oil left in there....
Click to expand...
Yea I pumped them over the container for a while. Then I let them sit upside-down. How are you measuring the height? I assume it's like my other bikes where you measure from the top of the oil to the top of the tube - springs out, cartridge in? What is the standard height?
If it's 120 like the workshop manual says, there is no way I'm getting close to 620 Ml in there.
 
Yes, measured heights of oil, springs removed & lowered to full compression :thumbsup:

There is a section somewhere in the manual the gives a 'safe range' of oil heights. Something like 100mm to 140 with the factory level in the middle. I'll have a look tonight & see if I can dig it out.

The volume wasn't for SMR by chance with the Marzocchi forks??
 
No, the height of the air gap to the top.
I can't find the oil table I was talking about. It might be in my owners handbook which is at home, sorry.
 
TE fork oil level.PNG Found it!
Just a single level for factory measurement. (Must have been thinking of my Honda CRF manual or something)

As mentioned, I have come up 20mm closer to the top of the leg to increase bottoming resistance.
Been like that for maybe 50 hrs, no ill effects, leaks etc.
 
You probably won't get the factory amount in because that is for a dry fill. It's hard to get all the oil out of the cartridge without full disassembly. Just go by the measured air gap with the springs out and forks fully compressed.

Preload should be set with spacers either on top of or under the springs. Fork springs usually have 3mm-10mm of preload, but you should set it based on sag and feel rather than just the preload value. I'd probably try to stay on the lower end of the range, but again, let the sag and performance guide you.
 
Awesome help guys! Much thanks. I had a second look at the paperwork that racetech sent me. It actually explains the preload set up in detail. But, I had to read it 3 times last night in order to understand it. On the TE it looks like I could probably use the old Schedule 40 PVC pipe trick for the spacer. I should even be able to put it on top - between the spring and cap?
 
Spacer would be best on top, that way if you wish to change it you don't have to take the legs off the bike to get them out.
 
Dangermouse449 said:
Spacer would be best on top, that way if you wish to change it you don't have to take the legs off the bike to get them out.
Click to expand...

Yea, I'm wondering if I even need to pull the legs to set the oil level... I'm thinking I could jack the rear tire up to get the forks level when compressed (with the front wheel on, that should be possible). :thinking:
 
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