83 GL 1100 Progressive shocks

[JoBoy68]

I want to put progressive shocks in my front forks has anyone seen or know of a good tutorial on doing this

[WingAdmin]

Pretty similar to this: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=16118

[JoBoy68]

have not read it all yet but looks like a damm good article. my two main questions are with the progressive do you need fork oil and air I saw them adding Fork oils so that answered one question and Thank you

[WingAdmin]

have not read it all yet but looks like a damm good article. my two main questions are with the progressive do you need fork oil and air I saw them adding Fork oils so that answered one question and Thank you

Shocks must have oil. That's what provides the damping. Without oil, you are riding on springs, with the result being exactly what you would expect.

Air can be optional, depending on the load being carried. The air is equivalent to spring preload.

[JoBoy68]

OK Thanks, good to know

[bofler]

You can change the springs without removing the forks from the bike. If you've never done a refresh on the forks, probably would be a good time to pull off the lower tube, clean out as much of the old oil and gunk as you can with brake cleaner spray, and put in new seals and bushings.

This video is pretty good:

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It doesn't talk about changing the springs, but that's literally just unscrewing the top, pulling out the old ones and dropping in the new ones. The hard part is putting the cap back on. I still have the stock springs and can do it by myself without much trouble, but I've heard that it's harder to get the cap back on when you put in progressives. Might need a helper for that.

With the progressives you don't need to add air, people say. You can even find some new fork caps and not have to worry about blocking off the valve holes on the stock caps.

I've also heard that you should add less fork oil (or ATF) than Honda specifies if you install progressives. Not sure about the exact amount, but you can find that amount somewhere on the web.

[JoBoy68]

Thanks for the info ......