Dear MXA,
I have a 2006 CRF450. What effect does raising or lowering the fork height have on handling. What are your recommendations?
Sliding the fork legs up in the triple clamps (so that more fork leg sticks out above the clamps) will steepen the head angle and make the CRF450 turn sharper. Sliding the forks down will make the bike more stable at speed. There is no proper setting. It is track specific. If you feel that the bike is too busy at speed and the front end is hunting and pecking (or suffering from head shake) slide the forks down to slow down the steering.
A corrollary to this is race sag. If you put in 97mm of sag, the head angle will be steepened slightly and 103mm of sag will slacken the angle. The goal is to find the perfect balance between the front and rear, along with the optimum head angle for your type of track.
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