Yamaha TRX850 Enthusiasts Forum

hey all,

what is the go with front forks? what makes a good front fork? is it just if they are harder or not??? and does it depend on the road type. when i ride around the city i get a lot of feedback through my standard front.

any recomendations?? if so, what, where how much???

There are a lot of differences, not just with forks, but with rider weight, weight distribution i.e. street fighter or sports set up, fork oil thickness, size of damper holes etc. Try a search on forks its all been said before.

Dave E

The standard forks were not actually that bad - but now they are 10+ years old!

Suspension set up is dependent on what you want to do. A race set up for track is completely different to road use is completely different for road racing.

Search on here for how to set the sag and start there - then change things in increments

Plenty of options for sorting the front end from new springs and oil, to revalve to different front end.

If you do want to change the front end I would strongly recommend these
http://trx850.motomaniac.net/forum/view ... =33&t=2563

I would recommend going with YZF 750 R forks which can be fitted relatively easily. A brand new pair of these went on e-bay last week for £185. They are a good fork, fully adjustable, and in their day they were Yamaha's best. (They are about 40mm shorter than the TRX forks but this does not cause a problem)

To fit them you will need to:

1) get hold of YZF 750 top and bottom yokes
2) press or cut the stem out of your existing TRX bottom yoke
3) press it into the YZF 750 bottom yoke
4) assemble it into the steering head exactly as per the TRX
5) fit the forks
6) obtain and fit a YZF 750 wheel, axle and mudguard
7) fit suitable calipers (either the 6 pot YZF 750 calipers which are pretty good but heavy or R6 / R1 blue spot calipers - which need the caliper mounts on the forks re-profiling to get them to fit)

If you want to go down this route I can provide more info with photo's

The alternative is to fit R1 forks, but this requires the TRX stem to be modified (either sleeved, or welded and re-machined, or a new stem making). Note the R1 forks are a bit shorter still than the YZF ones

Or ThunderCat forks, which fit the original yokes. Or for even less effort get your TRX forks converted to cartridges by Maxton.

wont the 40mm difference in length bugger up the handling?
40mm is a LOT

col wrote:wont the 40mm difference in length bugger up the handling?
40mm is a LOT

How does this not cause a problem?

Depends. There's 20mm sticks out the top of the TRX clip-ons that you don't need. Then the clip-on is 20mm thick. So if you fit the YZF yokes with the clip-on underneath the difference in length of the forks is immaterial.

Thanks for clearing that up youngy.
I planned to keep the clipons above the yoke by the time I fit the YZF forks, but I guess that's not going to happen.

Tarwetijger wrote:Thanks for clearing that up youngy.
I planned to keep the clipons above the yoke by the time I fit the YZF forks, but I guess that's not going to happen.

which means you will probably have to trim the fairing