Hi ALL - I had a good look around a breakers yard over the weekend and spotted a pair of front forks from a VTR1000F Firestorm that are up for reasonable money.

They are 41mm diameter and are adjustable for bump, rebound and pre-load.

Dimensionally they appear to be identical to the ones fitted to my CBR1000F-L

Even better - they have 4 pot callipers fitted and are working on 296mm dia discs.
( I know that 4 pot brakes will need the 5/8" master cylinder compared to the 1/2" on the CBR1000

The VTR1000F is listed as 196kg ( 431 lbs ) and the CBR1000F-L is listed as 235kg ( 517 lbs )

Has anyone tried fitting different forks to a 91 CBR1000F-L and were there any other issues when doing it ?

 

As long as the length is right and the stroke is the same (Or more) its do-able.

You may need to change the spring to suit and at worst you may need to re-shim the internals.

 

i would suggest against the SuperHawk forks. while they are 41mm and fully adjustable, they are marginal at best on the lighter VTR. most hawk owners usually end up upgrading their fork springs to progressive rate and gold valves, then they are livable on the hawk... before i changed my front end over, a riding buddy of mine was on a superhawk (rides 20-30,000 miles a year) and other than the crappy gas mileage, he hated the front end and figured i would be very dissappointed if i put them on my hurricane...

if you want, give it a try tho, if you get them pretty cheap, you can always resell them if they dont work for you...

 

Thanks for suggestions.

hurricane1000 You say - "before i changed my front end over"

What did you end up changing to ? Have you found another route to changing the front forks ?

Cheers

 

In standard trim I would imagine the VTR forks would be not much chop as according to Racetech they are .585kg/mm where us the CBR is heavier than that. So you would need a spring upgrade. You wouldn't know if the valving was up to the job until you put it in the bike. But to get the best out of it you would need to re-valve which many suspension guy can do to match the Spring.

Problem is still going to be the fork length as the CBR1000 has quite long forks. But then again you could always get longer tubes made, but then its starting to cost $$$

You may find tho that just by re-valving the CBR's forks with racetech valves & springs matched to your weight and riding will make a huge difference anyway.

 

Dean0, go to this post and there is a link to a site i put together https://cbrforum.com/m_97021/tm.htm

the bike now has an 1100XX front end... my gallery here has some more recent pics...

 

I just had RaceTech do my '93 1K forks, with springs, gold valves, oil, and fresh bushings. Any suggestions as to fork height? I'm currently setting them at about 1" protrusion above the top triple clamp from the fork crown.

The manual says there's an inscribed ring to indicate proper OEM height, but these do not appear on my unit.

 

My 1990 is 1 and 1/8 inch. So you sent your forks off to Race Tech? How much, and how long did it take?

 

I think the total came to $535 with shipping, tax, etc... I think $125 for the labor, and the rest was for the oil, bushings, springs, and gold valve emulators.

From when I sent them in until when I had them back was roughly 2 weeks.

As an aside, they return your OEM springs and bushings, spacers, etc... to you as well.

Looking forward to see how she handles now, as I've also put in fresh EBC pads all around, speed bleeders, Spiegler lines up front, and Avon Storms.