BlingKing
Race Dog
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2010
- Messages
- 1,076
- Reaction score
- 43
- Bike
- BMW R1200GS
I just did a Wilbers upgrade on two new shape F800GS's.
One needed the lowering system as the customer was vertically challenged like a lot of us, so I provided the Wilbers Lowering solution and it works really well.
The other one, the customer just wanted better suspension as he is going "Africa Touring" in months to come, I found several things doing both these upgrades;
I reported in a previous thread, (can't find it after searching) that the fork internals were the same crappy quality as the previous ones, albeit they are now WP - WRONG! I owe them an apology. The new fork cartridge is better, can be stripped and does actually contain shim stacks etc.
The improvements to the new WP based forks came from fitting the Wilbers Progressive springs and changing the fork oil, both of which made a huge difference.
Changing the height in terms of lowering on the new forks is a way better exercise for me, but that's my little BMW score. Heaven knows they owe me one! But the improvement in the fork performance after the Wilbers upgrade is also hugely noticeable, even with the lowering solution!
Just for the noobs to this that are wondering what difference that changing the fork springs make? The standard fork springs are linear in manufacture and are not the greatest in terms of their nM weighting especially for our "bigger" SA boys. We replace these springs with a har better quality Wilbers progressive fork spring. What the advantage of the progressive part of the spring is that it helps the forks react better over the "fast or high speed' compression. In real terms this relates to corrugations and small rocks and stones that you encounter on your dirt road travels. This is where you will find the biggest difference once doing the upgrade. The better weighting of the replacement spring also helps against dive and bottoming out which you will feel with the standard suspension.
The other vast improvement you will feel will be from the change of the weight in the oil as well as the air gap.
Everyone scoffs at the importance of a decent grade fully synthetic oil in the front forks, but it plays a huge role. The better the grade, the less emulsion (air mixing with the oil) happens and the less of chance of hydraulic lock which a lot of people have experienced when trying to do hard dirt sections on their F800GS's.
The Rear shock replacement is now way better on the ESA bikes as the Wilbers replacement now retains the BMW preload mechanism, which saves the customer R2000.00 when they want to change the rear shock and still have the pre-load knoppie! The ESA facility is also retained and works exactly the same off the same switch, mooi man!
With both bikes, the lowering one and the normal weight version upgrade. These Wilbers suspension upgrades really make a huge improvement on both the rear and front ends and if you want to do a little out of the ordinary on your new shape F800GS I would highly recommend it.
We can improve both the ESA and the non-ESA versions.
WILBERS Rocks!
One needed the lowering system as the customer was vertically challenged like a lot of us, so I provided the Wilbers Lowering solution and it works really well.
The other one, the customer just wanted better suspension as he is going "Africa Touring" in months to come, I found several things doing both these upgrades;
I reported in a previous thread, (can't find it after searching) that the fork internals were the same crappy quality as the previous ones, albeit they are now WP - WRONG! I owe them an apology. The new fork cartridge is better, can be stripped and does actually contain shim stacks etc.
The improvements to the new WP based forks came from fitting the Wilbers Progressive springs and changing the fork oil, both of which made a huge difference.
Changing the height in terms of lowering on the new forks is a way better exercise for me, but that's my little BMW score. Heaven knows they owe me one! But the improvement in the fork performance after the Wilbers upgrade is also hugely noticeable, even with the lowering solution!
Just for the noobs to this that are wondering what difference that changing the fork springs make? The standard fork springs are linear in manufacture and are not the greatest in terms of their nM weighting especially for our "bigger" SA boys. We replace these springs with a har better quality Wilbers progressive fork spring. What the advantage of the progressive part of the spring is that it helps the forks react better over the "fast or high speed' compression. In real terms this relates to corrugations and small rocks and stones that you encounter on your dirt road travels. This is where you will find the biggest difference once doing the upgrade. The better weighting of the replacement spring also helps against dive and bottoming out which you will feel with the standard suspension.
The other vast improvement you will feel will be from the change of the weight in the oil as well as the air gap.
Everyone scoffs at the importance of a decent grade fully synthetic oil in the front forks, but it plays a huge role. The better the grade, the less emulsion (air mixing with the oil) happens and the less of chance of hydraulic lock which a lot of people have experienced when trying to do hard dirt sections on their F800GS's.
The Rear shock replacement is now way better on the ESA bikes as the Wilbers replacement now retains the BMW preload mechanism, which saves the customer R2000.00 when they want to change the rear shock and still have the pre-load knoppie! The ESA facility is also retained and works exactly the same off the same switch, mooi man!
With both bikes, the lowering one and the normal weight version upgrade. These Wilbers suspension upgrades really make a huge improvement on both the rear and front ends and if you want to do a little out of the ordinary on your new shape F800GS I would highly recommend it.
We can improve both the ESA and the non-ESA versions.
WILBERS Rocks!
