Modern Triumph Cheap Fork Upgrade

For quite some time Ive wanting to bring the scrambler it back to a more stock and trail riding friendly height, the previous owner had lowered it and Ive been bashing pipes since day one. This summer I had put some cartridge emulators in my Yamaha and did a fair bit of research on fork theory and different fork valving. I liked what I heard. Despite dampener rod forks being 1940’s technology the come as standard equipment on many new bikes including my scrambler. I had toyed with the idea of getting some emulators but they require dissassembly of the fork to change the dampening settings, less than ideal to tear the forks down on the side of the road with the varying on and offroad conditions I like to ride in. I had heard of guys using 90’s Honda CBR tubes and internals as both bike have 41mm front ends.

Both fork types displayed with the oil flow paths displayed

See HERE for a great discription on the differences of the two. After a few month of searching on ebay for the proper Honda forks the ones I found were bent or to spendy to just try it out.

Wait a miniute, Vinney brought me some broken Suzuki Katana forks last year and they externally adjustable dampening cartridge type. A quick dig out of the parts area yielded them and that they are indeed 41mm as well. I saw no reason that they wouldent work just like the orignial tubes 41mm is 41mm right?

The tops of both forks, triumph on the bottom. The adjuster knob works by changing the size of rebound dampening holes in the fork

After some dissassembly of the the Suzuki and Triumph forks to take measurements it was clear there was some signiffent differences in the two. Now just to figure the workaround.

Here you can see the differences in the bushings, Triumph on top. You can see the Katana lower bushing is wider but measurement confirmed its less than a thou difference in OD. The upper bushing is removable and will be swapped with the triumph one to press into the scrambler slider. ID was the same @41mm loose

You can see the difference here in the bottoms, Triumph on top. The OD’s are different and the Katana has a small step on the bottom.

Any excuse right? Step faced off and about to be sized to the OD of the triumph size

One assembled with the suzzie parts and one stock, as you can see the hybrid fork is about 2.25 inches longer than the stocker. This works out to be the stock length scrambler at 30.25 inches.

Only the very trained eye will notice the external adjustment on the top of the forks as this is the only thing that appears not stock

How does it ride? Don’t know yet I was waiting on getting fork oil but Im hoping for big improvements.

-DAN

5 thoughts on “Modern Triumph Cheap Fork Upgrade

  1. great job!
    i’ve seen a few other applications of frankenforks like this since sv650s and Hawk GTs take the same 41mm forks and people like to canibalize cbr f3 forks. never even knew the katana had cartridge…

    • Sergei,
      After some more research it seem that the katana fork is not a true cartridge, It looks more like it has an emulator in there and the adjustable dampening holes.

  2. Pingback: Thrux Forks

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