The difference in suspension ride after the re-sprung and re-valved was night and day. Despite this huge jump over stock we were still having issues with hard bottoming when we were riding hard and fast. The Showa fork (internals) on the Africa Twin are literally from a '89-91 CR500R dirt bike. Obviously suspension technology has improved drastically since '89. On top of the old technology, the CR500 is literally 1/2 the weight of the CRF1000L. No amount of tuning was going to get these forks where I wanted them.

The solution? Fork swap! The Kayaba SSS forks were first used in 2006 on Yamaha dirt bikes and are still used on current models. They received rave reviews and still win dirt bike magazine and website shoots outs against some very new, very high tech forks. The KYB SSS units are considered by many to be the best dirt bike forks ever offered from the factory on any brand or model. The best part? They can be had for a couple hundred $$ if you look hard enough!

The swap is pretty straight forward. I put together a few part vlog on the swap process. Check it out part 1 below.