Hey everyone, hope all is well. This past weekend, my neighbor who owns a construction business built some new jumps on his land which I ride on as well. Well he built a 50 ft or so table, about 5ft tall off ground, it is amazing, on Sunday I set my mind to clearing it cleanly. (by the way i run a stock z400, only mod is uni filter). I hit it mid to high 3rd gear, preloaded my shocks a bit and launched off the jump, landed about 3-4 ft short of the downslope and landed so hard i bounced a few inches off the ground and onto the downslope. This was after a weekend of moderate jumping, nothing near this serious. After the jump I inspected the front shock mounts, because i knew before hand they were supposedly weak. Now i hav to be what looks like a stress crack in the frame just ahead of the mount, its in the frame or paint, not sure but im guessing frame. I guess im going to have a good friend and excellent welder weld it for me, this is the right thing to do right? while he does that i was also going to have him strengthen the other side as well. i also plan on buying a pair of lightly used 450r shocks to replace the stock fronts on mine. any other suggestions out there?

 

Well I guess the easy one would be don't do that. But if you're going to, definetely get better shocks. I read somewhere that if the 03 had the same shocks as the 05 they wouldn't have had so many frame problems.
I've probably just got to adjust mine, but I was bottoming mine hard off a jump made out of plywood. It's only about 4 feet tall, gives you 8-10 of air etween your wheels and ground and sends you about 10-12. As you can see for some reason that jump sends you more up than out, so that and my 230lbs may be why it was bottoming. I think the wood has too much "spring" I could hear something go "tink" in the front of mine a couple times.

 

You could always pick up a gusset kit, gets you prefabbed peices to weld onto the known weak spots. If you know someone that has access to the tooling, it is likely cheaper to make your own.

 

After the first season I put on the Arens Brothers brace, and no problems at all.........

 

Ya I need to at least stiffen my shocks in the very near future, I've contacted a welder already and have a meeting scheduled. My shocks are about mid-stiffness setting and I plan on going to one or most two off of stiffest, I'm also 180lbs, 5'11' if neone cares lol. I do plan on buying the 450r shocks, emailed a seller from ebay and he said they just bolt directly onto the Z without ne mods. My crack is from the stress and luckily is a very minor crack. It's so minor that I was able to do some minor jumping the rest of that day with zero problems noticeable. I'm going to have the welder weld the crack and re-enforce the areas where it broke on both sides, hopefully this will help till xmas when i buy the new shocks. Did some ebay research, exc. cond 450r take-off shocks are around 250 dollars, which isnt a bad upgrade price compared to the stocks.

 

recon, wat r u referring to? can i hav a site with some info on it plz?

 

I agree with Scooter86. Keep in mind though if you do any kind of wealding on that frame, you will need to get it powder coated after to keep it from rusting.

 

the interesting thing with my crack is there is already rust around it.