Air Fork Balance Kit

[circa1968]

On 5/23/2021 at 6:25 PM, Condor said:

I've seen a lot of requests to find an alternative.. myself included, but then i got to wondering   Since they haven't been replaced... ever.. did they even work??  Think about it..  The set up was to connect the forks with a schrader valve in the connecting line in place of the single OEM shrader fill.   It would allow the pressure to flow from one fork to the other.  While sitting the pressure would be equal, but while doing the twisties there would be an increase... depending on which fork is on the low side.. and a decrease on the high side fork... and the psi would become unequal for a brief time until the bike standing upright again.  It might effect handling??  Make sense??   Hey what else does an OF have to do on a Sunday afternoon??  🙂

Are you saying that the fork tubes would move independent of each other, like front suspension in a car?  That's an interesting concept, but as I stared at the front of my bike after reading this, I wondered how that would be possible.  I'm not a mechanical engineer, but it seems that with a rigid axle connecting the bottom of the forks and the two triple tree clamps at the top locking everything in place at rigid 90 degree angles (i.e. the fork to the axle & triple tree clamps),  in order for one fork tube to move independent of the other that rigid 90 degree angle would have to change and become some sort of parallelogram.  And with all due OF respect aside, I just don't see how that's possible.  What am I missing?

[ForbesB]

Condor, it doesn't quiet work that way. throughout the 70s and 80s Goldwing and race bikes had factory equalizers. there are modern dirt bikes that use 35pis or more in the front forks equalized in the pro circuit. I am battling this though process by people on a facebook forum currently.  The bikes have dated themselves and this stuff isn't currently available as it once was.

It was cheaper to designed the forks independent and decreased overall bike weight. it would have been more expensive to use progressive rate springs. This is a  technology that was available but  wasn't as inexpensive to manufacture in 98 and the bikes didn't get any modernizing in the long model run.  I think that it would be good to get a progressive spring kit eventually and do away with the air assisted dampening. until them I am going to build a equalizer kit. (I hope I will)