Stock suspension to Go-Race overhaul review

I purchased a used 2009 WR with stock suspension and after about a year have recently got everything back from Go-Race Suspension after a complete overhaul.  I thought I would leave a review with a tale of how I progressed to this point in order to potentially help other riders.  I apologize for this thread being long, but I wanted it to be as comprehensive as possible to serve as a guide for anyone who may be sharing the same frustration I was.

Background:  I weigh approximately 165-170 lbs (without gear) and I am fairly new to riding motorcycles or dirt bikes of any kind.  I do, however, come from a downhill / freeride mountain biking background, raced, and was a member of a trail builder crew of a downhill park in the Northeast so I do have plenty of experience knowing what suspension should feel like and aggressive trail riding.  Now I live in North Carolina so our trail types here are of a mixed variety (single track and double) and of varying terrain types.  I ride 90% trails / 10% road.

First ride and initial thoughts:  I am 5' 10' so I used the stock Yamaha lowering to get the bike into a somewhat manageable height.  To be honest I still feel that it's a bit high for my tastes but I am trying to get used to it.  My friends and I did some riding on some local single track.  These particular trails are very slow speed (first gear with occasionally getting into second).  At low speeds the bike felt fine, and the suspension was obviously set up soft for dual sport use at stock settings.  On these slow trails, everything felt adequate for the most part.  I noticed the biggest issues on any steep downhill where the fork would attempt to dive under braking.  Again, nothing that I felt wasn't manageable.  We did hit a fairly large STEP-UP at high speed and were able to jump it with no problem. (Notice I say step-up as that was important to my troubleshooting later on).

Second ride and initial changes:  After a few months some friends and I later decided to try one of the ATV parks in South Carolina.  The terrain there is pretty sandy with minimal elevation changes.  Opening it up on the throttle we were able to hit several small jumps at speed.  After the first jump I knew something had to give since I nearly went OTB, having the pogo issue that many people complain about.  I spent the rest of the day attempting to adjust my riding style to compensate without much luck.  After that, my rationale was that while I can jump a send a mountain bike off any jump you throw at me, maybe I had no idea how to jump a motorcycle.  I followed the threads on Thumpertalk for suspension adjustments.  Initially I turned up the compression on the forks a few clicks (made them stiffer) and made the rebound faster by a few clicks.  In the rear I left the compression settings stock and slowed the rebound, all the way down to MAX.  

Third ride:  After several rides on these settings the pogo effect was dramatically improved but not eliminated.  I still had to slow down prior to hitting any jump to ensure I hit them safely.  Using safety as an excuse, I sent my rear suspension to Go-Race.  Travis at Go-Race turned it around for me very quickyl and it was back on the bike before the weekend.  I missed zero riding time.  In the end, aside from the general rebuild, Travis completely revalved the rear.  We left the stock spring on the rear. This got me far more adjustment capability and made the rear far more predictable.  I did not have the cash at the time to get the front fork done at the same time, so I just did the rear.

Fourth ride:  The difference was huge and immediate.  Without even making the slightest change to the shock settings (Travis puts them back at stock), the bike hooked up and stayed planted over everything.  I could hit jumps at a much faster speed and the pogo-effect was gone.   However, after riding it for a month or two like this I still felt that the front was diving a bit on the face of jumps.  As a result, it seemed I was landing with the bike nose first to the point of it being dangerous.  

I honestly was going to leave things like this for a while with just the rear being overhauled, but when I blew a fork seal it forced my hand.  Rather than a simple seal replacement I decided to bite the bullet and send the forks to Go-Race for a complete overhaul as well.  Travis called me to discuss and I noted my background, riding style, etc.  My theory was that the biggest flaw in the suspension now was that the front was too soft and when I hit a jump face it would compress the fork too much and the rear would try to overtake the front, which was resulting in rear of the bike coming up / nose going down.  This would also explain why I had no issues with step-up jumps since the front would not be compressed like a smaller whoop style jump.  Travis seemed to agree and he rebuilt the internals and revalve, and probably most critically, added a stiffer front spring (.48 I think).  

Most recent ride:  Some friends and I went to Brushy Mountain ATV park for a shakedown ride.  For those who don't know, Brushy is some pretty fast but technical trails with lots of jumps scattered in.  Mostly you see two strokes there with very few small dual sports scattered here and there.  I think we were the only dual-sports there on a very busy weekend.  The bike was a completely new bike.  I can hit a jump at high speed, and as long as I keep the throttle constant everything stays completely level and composed, even over large jumps at high speed.  On the trail itself, the bike hooks up like it never did before.  This bike will never win a motocross race, but with these suspension changes it can hang with the light bikes on the trails.  I still have yet to touch the actual settings on the suspension so they are essentially "Go-Race stock".

Lessons learning:  If you are an aggressive rider, and if you do nothing else, turn your rear rebound to its slowest setting.  If you are on a budget and roughly in my weight class or bigger, the next thing I would suggest is moving up at least spring size in the front to reduce the dive on the front.  These bikes are way too soft in the front from the factory for more aggressive dirt riding IMO.  Finally, if you are willing to invest the cash, sending it to Go-Race is a great investment.  Those guys have first-class service and I honestly could not be happier in how my bike came out.  It feels like a completely new bike and it was 100% worth the money. On a stock bike I would do this one thing before I spent a single dollar on anything else.  Thanks again to Travis and crew.  I can't recommend you guys enough.

Good deal!   Makes a huge difference having it set up properly.   I agree that doing the suspension first, then picking better tires for your intended use should be the first step.  

Order of mods for me would be:   Suspension, tires, gearing, then fitment stuff like seat, pegs, bars.   All those things will help you to get comfortable and ride smoother and faster if you want.  Power mods last.

Its funny how different we all see on things.

I think the front end is fine, im 6"7, and weigh in excess of 230lbs in all the gear. I still have the stock suspention, but i spent time setting it up.
I've never had the bike bottom out on me, even on mx-styled tracks. Landing with the front end first come from poor jumping technique, not bad suspention.

I think its because I come from a line of 1990's dualsports (xt600, xt350, dt125r ect), so i guess anything is better than them

Jump about 23 secs in:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVxP1b44ngY

Great post.  Lower gearing, proper knobbies, and upgraded suspension are the most impactful mods I've made to my bike for off-road single-track riding.  I can't even rank those three mods in order of priority because for me each adds to the synergy of the overall riding effect.

I'm not a jumper or a track rider, but I do enjoy riding mine in the desert and woods.  I love the bike, but absolutely hated the stock suspension off-road, especially in rocky or root-infested terrain.  After riding properly suspended real dirt bikes like WR250F and KTM 300 XC-W the WRR felt like riding a kid's toy rocking/spring horse down a stairwell.  If stock suspension was the only option available I'd have sold the bike long ago.  I invested in re-valving and re-springing the bike and it's now a dream to ride.  In hindsight my only regret is waiting so long to do it.  My other bike is a Beta 300 2-stroke and my WRR Race Tech suspension is currently the gold standard I'm using to set up my Beta suspension.  I've even been considering swapping the upgraded KYB forks from the WRR to my Beta.  The only thing holding me back so far is that I need them on the WRR too.

Below are a few examples of terrain that's miserable for me to ride on the stock setup and fun to ride on well-valved and well-sprung suspension:
- Several miles of rocky desert terrain at 3:25 in this video.
- The rocky creek bed at 4:00 in this video.
- Several miles of the "road" in the photo below.



I love my little WRR... now if I could only get her to drop about 40 lbs of weight!  

If anyone have around 10 minutes to spare, please watch my latest video, with the Wr and the stock suspension working pretty fine, chasing (and overtaking) a wr450f and a ktm exc around a 5km track. Theres plenty of small whoops and uneven ground taken at speed, though as usual they dont show up much on camera.

Im still not saying that the bike wouldn't be better with suspension work, I just dnt think the bike is as bad as people try to make it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaqZx1zbo2k&t=10s

To me that video shows how poorly the rear shock is not it working pretty fine.
The bike shouldn't kick the rear up on every whoop or bump, you can see the front tilt down every time you hit a bump when it should stay level or raise the front up.
Your used to it doing that and making ok time around that track passing slower riders in the process but you would be faster and in more control if the shock wasn't kicking and bouncing around.

What you say, or how I understand it anyway, doesnt make sence when watching any mx rider riding real whoops. Front and rear of the bike bounces up and down, like you would imagine. This was the first one that came up on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66gP7yOm9E

The whoops int he video are way deeper than the suspensiontravel, so theres no way around the bike moving up and down. As usual it doesnt show up much on video, but I can assure you, every bike did that.

I do, howeveer, play on most of the whoops, making little jumps out of it by compressing the forks, and use the throttle as it raises back up, just to have more fun, and beacuse there was a guy right ahead of me, so I might aswell do something besides backing off. On the small hillclimbs and decents I also try to find a "kicker" to make it more interesting, and get a little air. You can clearly see one on this lap at 08:17. Its harder to tell on the small whoops.

Its not like i dont have anything to compare to, I tried the wr450f a week earlier, and said his suspension was harsh, the next weekend he had it dialed in much better and was way happier about it. I've got too friends with exc400.

Again, the suspension isnt as great as it gets, but IMO a lot of people make it sound like you NEED to do it. Its much better than a lot of the other dualsports in its class (klx250, crf250l and so on, and certanly better than the 80/90's dualsport like dr650, xt600)

Jens Eskildsen wrote:

What you say, or how I understand it anyway, doesnt make sence when watching any mx rider riding real whoops. Front and rear of the bike bounces up and down, like you would imagine. This was the first one that came up on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x66gP7yOm9E

What I'm trying to say is the back of the bike is bouncing up a lot more and higher than the front of the bike when you hit a kicker or whoop. A properly valved shock cures that and you can ride through whoops and over kicker bumps a ton easier.

Ah, yeah sure, cant disagree with that....I felt the rear end "kicking" so agree with all others about the lack of rebound control.
I just dont find it to be so big of a problem as others, and definatly not when compared to similar models.

Im glad we got this sorted out so we understand each other

Of cause OEM shock works on slow speed, but on higher, you need to think about better solution. I installed Go Race components and i'm very happy with them - suspension feels softer, but speed stability is fantastic and no more problems with forks high speed compression.
https://youtu.be/GR4kAhR6ctg

Again, im not saying the bike couldnt be better, and i agree that spending hundreds of dollars would help..Just like most things in life

I started commenting because the OP made it sound like certain death if he was to hit a jump with the bike...

Agreed, Jens. I think there is a lot DS motorcycles with more worst suspension. In first, i bought wr for slow discovery and meditation ride outs :) , but found, that i can't go slow, when its possible to open the throttle.