How to tell if a stem is straight:





Mine's straight enough.

 

Can you guess which are the 250S shocks?

 

Almost looks like a kit!

 

They're angled a bit too far down,,, but they LOOK good, lol. Turned out my tierod ends bound up and I had to raise the shocks another 3/4 inch.

 

Articulation.... About 8 inches of travel at the wheel. (the shocks have 3 inches of travel.... that's one more inch than a stock 230 shock).

 

Oh Lord! 49 inches! With stock rims and no wheel spacers! But at the normal riding height it should only be 48 inches or so. Will be a nice complement to my 50 inch wheelbase. (Just hope I don't clip a tree [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-shocked.gif[/img]).

 

Gotta get all those clearances right for a nice tight fit on the swingarm! I left a bit of the seal sticking up so it would squish against the thrust washer, but made sure the swingarm bolt compressed the spacers in the s-arm and NOT the s-arm tube. It took a bit of grinding and sanding, but I finally got it right. There's no play in this swingarm!

 

Well, that's it for now.... I'll take some more pics tonight as thing progress. I have everything mounted on the frame, but having trouble deciding where to mount the rear shock. My first try left it too stiff for my liking. It seems every little step takes hours n hours, but its nice to see it starting to look like a quad again instead of a bunch of dust covered steel cluttering up the garage.

 

i say this winter you let me send out my a arms to you randy and do +2 on each one for me...i have no need for +5...

O and i talked to the guy i bought my quad from and i found out that the rear shock i have is the remote resevoir from a 250...soooo bummed its blown right now. I cleaned up the quad tonight once i get my frame and everything painted this winter the quad will look like an 07 model instead of an 87!!! [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

 

Here are all the important chassis specs for the "race ready" quads offered today:



Some of the shock travel numbers I rounded or guessed at by reading the website. Its close, but don't quote me. All the other numbers are taken right off the website (except for honda's dry weight. They're the only one that listed curb weight instead of dry).

+2 a-arms are the first thing you have to do to ALL these quads except the suzuki. That gets the width in the 48+ inch area.... Which is optimal with a wheelbase of 50 inches and a seat height of 30 or so. To go less than that you are sacrificing handling or else you have to drop your seat height and shorten the wheelbase. Even the KTM is not "race ready". The 230 has a front width in the 38 inch area. Pretty lame. Even the new 250 Raptor is 42 inches wide, but the wheelbase is 44 and the seat height is 28.7.... So, that makes up for it a little. Still needs to be wider though.

Here's a good article on the R450: http://www.atvscene.com/machines/suzuki/ltr450-06.htm In my opinion the only race ready quad out.