Another angle.

Here's Thumpy fully clothed with his dignity restored again.


Yes I rode around but front brakes are still inop. Steering, handling and suspension all very nice. Improved significantly.

But problems. Caliper side pads drag because they are cocked at an angle. For the life of me I couldn't put the calipers on without them tilting. Will this correct itself when the pistons actuate? Will those pads straighten out or have I got some weird ass problem here?

The left side brake line is fairly tight for unknown reasons. I added 3/4" to the length of the OEM Eliminator brake lines but something is different. Can I get longer banjo fittings or do I need to get new lines all over again? There's a 1/4" difference between left and right lower lines even though I ordered them the same length.

Finally, I cannot find out anywhere how high the Eliminators forks sit above to top clamp. No pictures show this and nothing in the service manual. How do I know how high up to set the forks in the clamps?

No thanks to folks here I got it sorted out. Thumpy rides again!

I like it very much. I have braking performance comparable to my Ducati now. If grab alot of lever (like the original brake requires) the front wheel locks up. So I retrained my myself to only use 2 fingers. There's excellent feedback now which makes it easy to feel when I'm overdoing things. Even my Ducati doesn't have such good brake feedback in the lever.

This weekend I just ordered brand new rotors and pads. The worn out used parts I got originally were the cheapest I could find just for the purpose of fitment testing and the rotors are badly worn so that the pads don't make even contact. So now I'm upgrading stuff as needed/desired to formalize the change now that it's thoroughly burned in.

Not as thrilled with the suspension. Braking is a night and day difference but not the case with the springs. Quite a bit of dive. I'm going to swap a heavier weight oil in after conversations with ZL900 Eliminator owners. I'm told this is a worthwhile improvement for little money and effort.
After that if I'm still not happy I can choose to upgrade to progressive springs. As it is now there's not alot of difference from stock forks.

But when I get cutoff doing 80 on the interstate I don't need to swerve off onto the shoulder anymore to avoid rear-ending. This sucker sheds speed fast now.

I think the last and missing piece now is fork bracing. It needs it now. The only ZL900 brace I've seen was stupid money. So I'm going to take the Savage fork brace I bought before swapping the front end and get it machined to fit the ZL forks. I could probably do it with my belt sander but I don't want to risk messing up the expensive brace. The shop will probably only need a 1/4 hour for the job. Not much material needs removed - like 1mm at most.

Gary_in_NJ wrote on 04/18/20 at 16:53:31:


Egads! In that case I hope the heavier fork oil works as promised.

At least if the oil change makes it too harsh it's easy enough to go back to the factory recommended one.

I have not yet tried putting air in the forks because I never got around to buying a suitable hand pump.
Could increased pressure help here?

From reading stuff in the Eliminator forum I got the impression that adding air pressure is only useful for riding two up. So tinkering with this hasn't been important since nobody has wanted to be a pillion since the bike has been back on the road.

Yes very good point about the wet. I've intentionally locked the wheel at various speeds and still doing it so I can get the feeling for what amount of pull is the threshold at different speeds. It takes more pull the higher the speed. Road surface is another factor. Eventually with practice it will become instinctive.
But I haven't done it on wet roads yet. I'm sure I'll be wishing for my Ducks ABS then.  

Rotors got lost in the mail awhile but finally turned up. The pads got here awhile ago.

I've never done bedding in with new rotors and pads at the same time. Anything different in the process compared to only new pads?