hey guys, I have a 06 450r and the stock suspension is way to rough for my liking. Now I weight 208lbs so I'm not the lightest rider, I ride on trails and sand with me buddies on the weekends, I'm not extremely into riding yet but I'm looking to fix up my ride a little, so has anyone done the dual spring conversion with extended travel and rebuild for the fronts and a rebuild with new spring in the rear? Did it male a good improvement? And are long travel a arms a must? Thanks guys

for the type of riding you discribed long travel would be a waste in my opinion. remember long travel isn't talking about wheel travel its refering to shock travel. what long travel does is give the shock a longer body and shaft travel to do the same job as standard travel so a smooth ride is easier to get.

i have GTT rebuilds on both my dune and MX quads and it was by far the best mod i have done to either. i have riden long travel/elka setups and dont think they are any better for my riding level. the rear link gets rid of the bucking and the front is plush.

I have the GTT rebuilds and link on my ride also, night and day difference from stock.

Does anyone on here run the jet suspension revalves? They seem like they might be a better design than the gt thunder

not downplaying the jet package at all but why do you feel they might be better then the gtt's?

The jet revalves add 1.7 inches of travel. They also come with triple rate springs. The springs are also two inch springs. Nick is also a board sponser. He needs to offer a discount for board members though.

the gtt also add aprox 2" wheel travel, he just advertise as 7/8 shock travel

i have heard good and bad about triple rate on stock length shocks. somr say what you gain with the extra spring you loose by having an extra spacer. im no shock expert so i dont know. but it makes sence to me, by adding an extra spacer you loose that much room for the springs to compress.

again im not saying anything bad about jet, i just know how good the gtt's are and he has been doing the shock mod and had his link sence honda came out with the 450r, i had my first set done in sep 2004.

The 2" of wheel travel is an approx, it is actually around 1.7" which correlates to roughly .7~.85" of shock travel, since the motion ration is approx 1.9" of wheel travel for every 1" of shock travel (motion ratio). We gain 1.7" of wheel travel, any more than that the frame would contact the ground with stock a-arms.

There is not much more travel you can get with a stock 450R shock or the piston rod will contact the inside of the body. The extra spacer doesn't cause an issue on travel or spring height at all and with the springs, there is plenty of spring travel without coil bind, especially with OBD springs. However, if the crossover spacers were not set properly, the main spring could coil bind 3/4" through the bottom out bumper.

GT does a good job and so do we, but think about this. Your cruzing along down the trail and you only have while your riding approx 2" of shaft travel before you are into your bottom out bumper. That's all a shock tuner has to work with to make it feel nice no matter what you are going to hit, the more progressive I can make that feel, the better and more plush the suspension feels.

We use a true triple rate progression, meaning I divide the available shaft travel at full extension before bumper by 3 and set crossovers to cross in a 3 point progression so it is very progressive and easy to troubleshoot any handleing issues is needed.

Nick

nick thank you for takeing this over. i really wish i knew alot more about suspension maybe you can help us dummies out. i really hope you didnt take any offence to my coments as i didnt mean for them to be negetive towards you or your company.

you mentioned 2" shock travel, what is the total amout of shock travel after you mod the body?

is there a magic number of inches of wheel travel you shoot for? i have heard that you can have to much.

would it be safe to say that a lighter rider can get a plusher ride then a heavy guy because the spring rates can be spread out more?

thanks
tod

No offense takin Todd, Iron sharpens iron, but thanks for saying that. It gives me an opportunity to yack about it, so it's all good. Without giving everything away, the internals are removed and modded, this gains wheel and shock travel, the body cut sets the quad back down to the ride height we are looking for. So the body mod doesn't increase wheel travel, the internals do.

We like 10" to 10.5" in front and yes you can have too much wheel travel, but I am more concerned with that on the rear, too much uptravel feels pretty awful on downhills and high speed corner entry. With the shock mount locations, there is only so much wheel travel you can get which is dictated by the shock travel which will limit extend and compression instead of ball joint bind!

Not sure on a lighter rider getting more plush ride, I think that makes since, but as far as rate spread, there are enough spring rates and tenders available or we have them custom made if we have too. As far as rate spread, too light and the quad sags and uses up the too soft a rate like a ZPS spring, not good at least for what most quads are used for, instead we want not so drastic a progression.

I've had a great year on my GTT rebuilds. I have not rode a bunch of others, but this is a good rebuild. I have 7 or so races and a bunch of practice rides on mine. I do XC pretty hard and am a decent rider. The GTT rebuilds are a million times smoother than stockers.

They are a great deal.

I sent mine off to Johnny Hale at JH racing 2 weeks ago. I race XC, so he hooked me up with a triple rate front, and dual rate rear set up with link.

He did a great job and they made a huge difference. JH has great customer service and quick turnaround.

I had GTT in the past and they are good as well.

Either will make a huge difference for you.

Yea, Johnny's a good guy. Does great work and is just a nice guy. He does know his suspension being a pro level MX racer himself.

Excellent discussion all. It's only made the discission harder for me.

Nick, what does the high flow piston get you?

I think my answer would be better left via PM or call, too much to discuss here. Are you able to blow through the shock with stock piston? Yes. So there are cons and pros.