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travis-grant
12/7/2017 5:21am
12/7/2017 5:21am
Edited Date/Time
12/8/2017 11:38am
I heard somewhere years ago that he used the forks off of his 1996 HONDA on the Suzuki as he just couldn't get to grips with the ageing Suzuki front end. How true is this? i'd love some insider knowledge
Just the logistics alone must have been a real pain. the triple clamps and hubs, or was the WHOLE front end a Honda?
One flat tire away from the championship, correct?
The Shop
Yep - One flat tire away from a championship.
I also read somewhere that he bent a 40k set of forks on his YZ250 play riding in the hills, might have been his book but I can't remember.
I just noticed they were running Renthal sprockets and Pro Taper bars, seems kind of odd.
From my amateur experience with a 96 and 97 RM250 that I used to own, the front wheels definitely felt heavier to me on those bikes. Not in a bad way, but like if you were riding an inverted fork bike and packed a bunch of mud/clay into the knobs. It had a different feeling for sure, but those things were beefy as hell. 49mm twin chambers and they ate up any jumps I could throw at them.
Loving this thread, I had no idea he used forks from a CR!
Pit Row
1997 factory RM 250. McGrath said in his book Wide Open "the Suzuki was giving me problems I wasn't sure I could overcome. It handled poorly and was really slow. How's that? Compared to my CRs, the RM was a turtle. Handled like one, too. The bike didn't hit hard enough anywhere in the powerband. It was sluggish coming out of corners and just didn't have the mid - range to run with other bikes on the straightaways." He goes on to rail on the conventional Showa forks and the clutch as well. Don't think he enjoyed his year on the Suzuki.
Seems when the bike isn't tied to McGrath, people were fond of it
Travis Pastrana never seemed to have too many issues with RMs... And if memory serves me right he did the odd jump on them...
Post a reply to: MC's 1997 Suzuki (the forks rumour)