At what weight is a suspension upgrade necessary

At 215 in gear + 10-15 pounds of tools and gear, I have needed stiffer springs on my other bikes. However I have read that the preload on the WR is quite adjustable and some riders in my weight range have been able to tweak it enough to get by.......what is the weight threshold for the stock setup? I will be riding a decent amount of rocky/sandy technical stuff.....

It's worth redoing regardless of weight. The stock valving is far from ideal.

The springs should probably also be swapped at that combined weight. I'm 165 without gear and there are times I wish I had slightly stiffer springs.

Arkmage wrote:

It's worth redoing regardless of weight. The stock valving is far from ideal.

I agree.
The rear shock is also assembled with air in the oil, a big no-no.

I weigh about 230 - 240 lbs with gear on. With about 10 lbs on the rear rack the suspention was fine. Plus I have a 4.7 gallon IMS tank. When I loaded the rear with about 50 lbs of camping gear the sag was too low. I put a stiffer spring on the rear shock myself. Did not re-vavle or anything. It is now fine when I load up with gear on the back. SAG looks to be about right.

I am not an agressive offroad rider doing jumps and stuff though.

I'm in bsheets camp. I'm 220 (more in gear). If you're not doing high speed stuff with whoops and such you're probably okay.

Get the preload set correctly and set the comp/rebound where you want it and go for it.

At the rated two-up rating there is plenty of margin on the spring.

Right or wrong, I've ridden most all of my off-road bikes (except for my '83 Yamaha IT250) with completely shock springs and valving).

My bud did his (Wr450) and while his weight was less than mine, my CRF handled as well as his Wr did under general riding conditions.

Sure... I would have probably been more comfortable and confident with additional capability (even if just perceived), and I ride pretty hard, but while NOT racing, I probably would not go for the custom rebuild.

Arkmage wrote:

It's worth redoing regardless of weight. The stock valving is far from ideal.

The springs should probably also be swapped at that combined weight. I'm 165 without gear and there are times I wish I had slightly stiffer springs.

I'm around the same weight as you but after recently shopping around for a suspension upgrade I've been told that I should go for a lighter spring due to the bike being set up for pillion passengers and the stock spring is to heavy????

Ozy wrote:

Arkmage wrote:

It's worth redoing regardless of weight. The stock valving is far from ideal.

The springs should probably also be swapped at that combined weight. I'm 165 without gear and there are times I wish I had slightly stiffer springs.

I'm around the same weight as you but after recently shopping around for a suspension upgrade I've been told that I should go for a lighter spring due to the bike being set up for pillion passengers and the stock spring is to heavy????

From his own testing and from customer feedback Fastbike recommended a stiffer rear. I won't go into details on the geometry changes and spring rates he suggested. If you want that info get him to redo your kit and he'll walk you through it.