Cartridge emulator

thomas@hauge.net

thomas@hauge.net

Senior member
Location
Gothenbourg, Sweden
Couple of weeks ago i fitted i kit on my Cagiva Grand Canyon and it only required some minor work making some distances in the lathe.
No I finally got around to fix the few annoying things on my RGS (rattling fairing, bad brakes, and harsh front end)

How ever, fitting the emulators is not as straight forward as on the Cagiva.


This is the damper rod from my RGS. The force from the spring is going directly to the top of the rod. To make the emulator work proper it has to seal against the piston (with the force from the spring), which only is in position with a small clip.

I made up new pistons, removed the valve in the top of the rod and I'm going to make proper washers to hold the piston in place so it can cope with the force from the spring/bike wight.

Is this the right (or one of them) way to go?

original damper rod


Damper rod with removed valve


New and old piston



Another solution is of course to make a new rod as well.

 
The difference is that the damper rod takes the pressure from the fork spring via the emulator and new spacer, rather than the circlip holding the damper rod piston.
 
Hauge, I'm using a Progressive Suspension cartridge emulator, but very similar to the Gold Valve (just costs more). Progressive Suspension sells a little aluminium spacer ring that sits on top of the damper rod piston, about 8-10 mm wide from memory, that spaces the emulator a little bit above the piston and seals the oil flow from the piston so it all goes through the emulator. It even has a split Teflon seal on the outside of the spacer to be sure no oil pressure sneaks around the outside. If you do it this way I don't think you need to replace any damper rod parts unless they're actually worn out.
You do need to drill 8mm holes into your irreplaceable damper rod to let the the oil flow freely, which is pretty scary if you can't just knock up new ones yourself.

Ken
 
A later mods done is to add a strip of Teflon around the outside of the emulator that seals and forces the oil completely through and not past the outside of the  emulator.Had it done at the local Race Tech place.Took a couple of attempts to get it snug and not drag to much.They did sell this bit but only for early 40mm Husky forks.
 
Well, being involved in the organizing of the Swedish Laverda rally I had to have the bike running.
Since the damper rod allready was gone (auxiliary holes drilled) I did take a short cut.
I could not rely on the little clip holding the piston also could hold the complete load of the front end.
I made an easy solution (a bit dodgy though) and welded a quite beefy washer to hold the piston and yet let the piston be free to move around to avoid friction.

New pistons and washers:


Spot weleded:



Together with rebult brakes, new AP M/C and new fairing bracket ist a new bike.

There is more to be done with adjusting the fork but most of the harchness is gone and fork finnaly moves more upp and down than flexes...
 
Far easier just to make the spacer for the top of the damper rod for the emulator to sit on - as per the Racetech instructions and the Laverdamania site.
 
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