Introduction

[pattonme]

Maybe you'll recognize my handle from RiderForums and SVRider. In any event I've been offering a service for the past 10+ years to retrofit cartridge fork internals into a myriad of bikes equipped with 41mm damper-rod forks. These include such wildly popular platforms such as the Suzuki SV650, Bandit 400/600, and Katana 600/750, as well as Kawasaki's ZR7, Z750, EX6N, and Ninja 650R family, and Honda CB-1, CB750 and now NC700.
 
Early on in my riding career I found stock suspension to be downright unpleasant. Like most other folks I did the RaceTech GVE mod but struggled to find a useful combination of oil weight and pop-off spring. Completely fed up with the still lousy performance I looked around for cartridge forks in 41mm and discovered the Kawasaki ZX6F. I promptly slotted the entire guts and uppers into my ZR-7s of the time and the transformation was profound.
 
Back then the AK-20 didn't exist for damper-rod bikes though Max and I were both thinking the same thing: there surely is a market here. But I'm only a hobby machinist and I wasn't eager to compete in the professional suspension business. I designed my offering to be inexpensive ($300+) and yet retain all 3 adjustable settings: (slow) compression, spring preload, rebound. These savings are largely arrived at by recycling OEM parts (mostly Showa) and making the little pieces to do a retrofit. It does not hold a candle to the cosmetic beauty of Traxxion Dynamics' offering nor does it have their in-house tweaks. I'm limited by what Showa provides and what I can do on a 9" manual lathe. By comparison Max has a few million $$$ in state of the art CNC turning centers. But from a fluid control standpoint I think my valving stack is competitive and easily 90% as good.
 
If you're looking to fix the awful stock suspension for not much more than a GVE "upgrade", I think I have the most competitive solution. If you're looking to get that last 10th of a second per lap, eyeing thousands in contingency money, and are intent on taking home the regional championship (and the podium girl), please do yourself and me a favor and engage Traxxion Dynamics or another professional tuner. You can afford their services and will benefit from track side support. That said, about half of my customers are avid track day riders, and there's more than a handful of racers who use my solution, at least as a starting point.