As there is the possibility of a few of you doing this mod in the near future, I though it would be a good time to cover the proper way to install a brace and the down falls of doing it wrong.....
The common train of thought is to just slap the brace on and go. While this might work some or even most of the time, there is the potential of the brace causing the forks to stick or bind. I really shouldn't have to explain why this is a bad thing.
In order to do it right, there is a few steps and a little work involved but the pay off is well worth the effort. So let's get to it.
1) Put the bike on a set of stands or support the front end off the ground.
2) Remove the front wheel
3) Reinstall the axle. It should slide easily into both forks. If you have to fight it in any way, there is a good chance that the forks are misaligned and you might need to loosen the triple clamp on one side and move the fork up or down a little until the axle can easily slide in.
4) Remove the front axle.
5) Write down your pre-load and rebound damping settings and then turn both of them all the way out.
6) Remove the fork caps and pull the springs. If you are running progressive springs, take note of which end has the tighter coils, so you can reinstall them the same way.
7) Install the front axle and then mount the fork brace.
Grab the front axle and slowly (to not shoot oil out of the top of the forks) cycle the forks through their full travel. You are checking for any binding or sticking. If they are nice and smooth, go to step #9. if you feel any tight spots, remove the brace and reinstall it. Then repeat the steps to make sure the forks can go through their complete travel with no sticking.9) Reinstall the fork springs and caps and return the pre-load and rebound damping to the settings you have recorded (this will be your new starting point as you will need to readjust this a bit as the front end will now, in most cases, be a little to stiff and have a little too much damping) On my set up I ended up taking 1 turn out of the pre-load and 1\2 a turn out of the rebound damping after installing the brace but YMMV.
10) Reinstall the rest of the bits and go out and enjoy a much more planted front end and improved braking from you new set up.
