04-11-13, 12:25 PM
Found it.... Some of it discusses tiger800 specific info, but generally it's a good description of oil weights / brands etc...
That's correct -- as far as it goes...
Trouble is: If you may be expecting to change the damping by changing fork oil, you may need to know more..?
The fork oil used in the T800 is Showa SS 8 -- which falls into the range of SAE-10 oils. If you use Showa SS 8 fork oil, you'll get OEM damping. If you use some other SAE-10 fork oil you may get different damping -- more or less.
The SAE viscosity scale is somewhat coarse and groups a wide range of viscosities into limited measurements like: SAE-5, SAE-10, SAE-20, etc. In some cases, a "10" can have a viscosity similar / close-to another brand's "5" or some other brand's "20".
What's needed is to compare Showa SS 8 fork oil viscosity measured in centistokes (cSt) with what ever fork oil you plan to use as a replacement -- it's viscosity also measured in centistokes.
Centistokes (cSt) is a much more accurate, laboratory, method of measuring viscosity and will serve the suspension tuner better than relying on the broader SAE measurements.
That's correct -- as far as it goes...
Trouble is: If you may be expecting to change the damping by changing fork oil, you may need to know more..?
The fork oil used in the T800 is Showa SS 8 -- which falls into the range of SAE-10 oils. If you use Showa SS 8 fork oil, you'll get OEM damping. If you use some other SAE-10 fork oil you may get different damping -- more or less.
The SAE viscosity scale is somewhat coarse and groups a wide range of viscosities into limited measurements like: SAE-5, SAE-10, SAE-20, etc. In some cases, a "10" can have a viscosity similar / close-to another brand's "5" or some other brand's "20".
What's needed is to compare Showa SS 8 fork oil viscosity measured in centistokes (cSt) with what ever fork oil you plan to use as a replacement -- it's viscosity also measured in centistokes.
Centistokes (cSt) is a much more accurate, laboratory, method of measuring viscosity and will serve the suspension tuner better than relying on the broader SAE measurements.