Has any one had their fork tubes coated with titanium nitride or DLC does it make any difference, I am after reducing stiction,
http://www.rc51forums.com/forums/61-suspension/81786-budget-sp-2-fork-upgrades.html not sure if you can access this...
Thanks for that, my R1 forks were similar to those. It used to take me about 5 hours to change the shim stack, I now have the BPF forks I recon if I had my tools ready I could change in 20 mins, they can be done without removing from the bike. When you have the tools they are much easier to strip than the 20mm old style.
Interesting post this one and quite a lot of pros and cons and lots of divided opinions between DLC and Tin DLC is more durable, and hard chrome has less friction than either, but it is much softer, too soft. So Ohlins choose Tin, the reasons include that it is softer than DLC. When Ohlins makes a fork tube the tube goes thru 5 polishing steps, even more on the Superbike forks. The first 4 involve polishing the tube prior to the Tin coating, getting as fine a finish to reduce friction, friction is the mortal enemy of good suspension. The fifth step is polishing the tube AFTER the Tin coating has been applied, Why? Because any coating, including DLC, leaves the coated surface LESS smooth than it was before the coating. Here is the advantage over DLC, the DLC is TOO HARD, it does not polish well after the coating has been applied, so it ends up not being as smooth, and because of that has more friction than Tin. Why do the other companies not do the same, many reasons, cost is the big one, the additional time and steps involved, finding someone that can do it.
You can throw away the dust seals and reduce the drag an appreciable amount but oil seal life suffers
as far as i knew roughly hard chrome had a friction of about 0.6 ticn was about 0.3 and dlc was about 0.1. these figures may not be the be all and end all. I come from a machining background where we used to put scrape lines in bedways this was to trap lube. a perfectly ground bedway is no good, I see this principle has also been used on forks with the 400 grit cross hatch on the hard chrome, I suppose you have to look at the top racers if they are not on dlc then it may not be the best, but on the other hand most are sponsored and are obliged to use what the company can sell the best. in reality you cannot beat peoples experience of these things and sharing their thoughts
I am not sure about removing the dust seals, on my R1 I replaced the fork bushes, I know it sounds sad, but when you look under a microscope you would not believe how much stuff is embedded into the bush, these are made of lead and ptfe and very soft. any crap that gets past the dust seal has a good chance of sticking in the bushes
I know I'm being picky here, but I think you mean reduce the stiction. Removing the dust seals will do nothing for the drag. lol
some racers do remove dust seals to reduce stiction, a dust seal does add quite a bit of drag. I removed the inner spring on my R1's dust seal as a half way measure, this reduced quite a lot of drag
You still have way too many components within the forks that would cause drag/slippage. Your never going to reduce enough to equate to something that floats without any drag, virtually impossible, I'm not saying you can't improve on it but just seems quite drastic removing seals or springs for less stiction.
I have just got the SKF seals so it looks like i will have to remove bottom castings for tubes TIN coating, i have noticed a lot of motocross guys have dlc i guess this is for stone chips and wear mainly, any tips on removing bottom castings
