I now have about 100 miles on my Valkyrie with the Motorvation sidecar. I have found that my arthritic wrists were having a time of it steering so I have found and bought a Steerite triple tree and will be installing it soon. Donna at Steerite says to go to 25w fork oil. I was intending on putting in longer spacers over the Progressive fork spring and changing the fork oil from 7.5w (now underdamped with the car) to 15w. I'm a little reluctant to change to 25w as I think that it might be too much damping. Anyone know why 25w should be used?
With a heavy Valkyrie and a light car like the Spyder I wouldn't think that heavy of a viscosity fork oil would be needed unless in a hot climate with heavy loading. I've used that once and got a really choppy ride.
Fork oil's cheap, though not all that easy to replace sometimes.
Lonnie
Thanks for reinforcing what I was thinking. I'm going with 10w or 15w.
Fork oil is cheap like you said but the Valk has no drain holes and inverted forks so it's hard to change.
I changed out the forks on my 83 Honda GL650 to some forks off of an 83 Honda V45 Magna to reduce the trail. I had been running ATF in the forks, I replaced that with some bonefide 20 weight fork oil. What an improvement. The ATF was like no oil at all. Now I don't even slow down for the speed bumps.
I run Progressive Springs in my 89 GL1500 and they recommend 15 wt. It seems to do ok with that. I just installed Champion's EZ-Steer on the forks and what a difference that makes FWIW.
Ralph
Thanks. Just what I needed to hear. The GL1500 is similiar to the Valk. I'll be using 15w fork oil, sounds good.
I know that this is a old post but for what it's worth, they suggested I use 25wt oil in my Shadow 1100T also, it doesnt have drain holes either, what i used is a MitiVac to suck out the old oil, worked great, I got all but 1oz out and like you I didn't go to 25wt for the same reasons, I used 15wt and put 1" spacers on progressive springs, works great so far.
Ted
Thanks for your input Shadow. Since we had the forks off the Valkyrie to install the Steerite reduced trail triple tree, I had the forks rebuilt (seal was leaking) 1 inch spacers installed with the Progressive springs and 15w oil. Works just great, much less dive and tracks better although slightly on the stiff side which is fine with me.
What a difference the reduced trail made!!! Steering is very easy now.
wayne
