Dirt Bike Suspension Troubleshooting Basics

You got your suspension back from Moto Lab but there are still some basics things you should be checking!

Here are a couple simple troubleshooting tips you should be doing at home:

Most KTM manuals are available for free for download on their website, make sure to check them out. (Same with Husqvarna) The most benefit you could have, is just really browsing through that thing, some of the installation methods, and or checking and setting SAG is going to be absolutely massive.

Some of the most common problems we hear about that creates a chassis imbalance, or other technical handling problems, are: first and foremost: SAG. Check your sag! We can't reiterate this more. If you're not sure how to do this, check that manual you just downloaded OR watch some of our other videos.

If you're way out of the weight range of the stock springs (For KTM and Husky, it's about 165 to 190 pounds with gear) then you need to get it sprung for your weight.

Zero your clickers, look in the manual that will provide a suggestion of three different settings.
Checking your tires and/or pressures. If you got old crusty, rock hard, rubber tires, that's not going to be worth the heck.

Also, some of the big things that we see too, as far as maintenance wise, linkage or linkage bearings. One of the most common bearings to fail or go bad, is the lower shock bearing on linkage bikes or the lower heim joint on PDS bikes. You could have the best suspension in the world, but if your suspension is binding on a rusty frozen bearing, it's not gonna be worth a crap.

One of the other things that we see here too is chain tension. Check the chain tension. Make sure that you're matching it with your model.
On this linkage model in particular, you want to take and measure off where they recommend in the manual, pull it up and make sure that you're into spec. If this chain tension is too tight, you're going to cause a series of issues, massive handling and imbalance issues, as well as prematurely damaging the countershaft bearing inside the motor, as well as some of the PDS models we see, where it actually cracked the back half of the case. So it's big time and you need to read your manuals and check that stuff.

Some of the front end issues that we see with people having either improper installation of the front wheel and drawing forks out of parallel, or if you've had a crash or tip over and, you know, you're beating your front end off the tree to square that fender up with the with the front wheel ... Well, when you get home you need to check that stuff. Grease and anti-seize the bolts, make sure everything's straight and torqued out. If you've had a significant crash or impact, and everything's straight and torqued out and you're still having issues...You probably have bent triple clamps.

So you need to pull those out, set them on a flat surface, and they should be flat. If they're rocking like that on a flat surface, you've got a bent or twisted triple clamp. Very common in hard enduro, if you're looping it out and it's landing on top of the handlebars and the triple clamps, that stuff gets bent.
It's a consumable item, you're going to need to check and replace that stuff.

So that's just some of the most common things that you can really do to check at home. Hopefully those are tips that you can really help you. But please, I really encourage you to find the manual, purchase the manual, and, and spend some time just reading through it and get back to basics.

So hopefully that was some help and check us out at motolabdirtbikes.com. We look forward to helping you guys soon. Thanks again.