My bike has finally been transformed from a mongrel back to a mostly stock 700S. Somehow I didn’t notice it when I bought it, but it came with a 650 front end instead of a 700S front end. I scrounged all the necessary parts off of eBay and finally had the time to switch everything over. Tonight was my first ride on the new setup.
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- Initial observations:
- Way more responsive! The 650 front end always needed a healthy dose of counter-steer to turn the bike at speed. The 700 front end doesn’t take half the effort that the 650 front end needed.
- The bike sits taller, so my sidestand works again!!! This really is one of my favorite points. For 2 years I’ve had a sidestand I couldn’t use because the bike didn’t lean over enough.
- The bike sits taller, so it’s a little more difficult to get the bike off of the center stand. :-/
- The 650 front end seemed to be more stable over bumps in a turn. This could also just be due to the fact that I’m not that used to the 700 front end yet. There’s also plenty of tuning to be done on these forks that I haven’t bothered with yet.
- I need to re-aim my headlight. Low-beam is now high-beam and the high-beam blinds all the squirrels in the trees overhead.
Also, added a paint-matched chin spoiler while I was at it. I need to point the front end of it down a bit, but so far I like the look of it.