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CB550 1978 F2 Front Fork Springs

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Oddjob:
No problem mate. You’ve learned something new so not a wasted day.

Btw, if your fork top nuts are very rusty, and most are, you can buy some polished stainless steel ones these days for probably less than genuine Honda ones. Just for info.

K2-K6:
Its now fairly routine in bigger MTB forks to do tbe same in packing the preload to get ride height correct.

They're called "tokens" in there, and proprietary hard plastic that can be clicked together in addition for gaining more distance.  There's general use of fork stanchion @ 40mm diameter too for racing purposes. 
Some also use internal spacer that screws inside the spring coil to change the rate of spring by making section of coil incompressible, gives effectively a shorter wire length,  which lifts the spring poundage without changing the spring.

Looks here that maybe previous owner was in need of jacking the front generally with the longer spring + spacers fitted.

Orcade-Ian:
Neil,
I have a pair of springs from my 550F1 - they both measure 476mm - I bought brand new ones as the front end seemed a bit firm and I was not sure if these were original or aftermarket.  The new ones made no noticeable difference and were exactly the same length as the ones I removed.  You can have them for a small donation to the Forum - I'll pay the postage if you PM me with the details,

Ian

McCabe-Thiele (Ted):
It must have been a craze, my 500 had a similar arrangement of preload spacers fitted, not a nut but a section of steel walled  tubing
I ditched the spacers, my springs were both the same length and within the length range when not compressed as per the manual.

taysidedragon:

--- Quote from: McCabe-Thiele (Ted) on May 10, 2026, 11:24:57 AM ---It must have been a craze, my 500 had a similar arrangement of preload spacers fitted, not a nut but a section of steel walled  tubing
I ditched the spacers, my springs were both the same length and within the length range when not compressed as per the manual.

--- End quote ---

Some bikes have tube type spacers fitted as standard. My old Trident 900 had them.

Homemade experimentation usually consists of a stack of washers but some nuts fit nuts, or whatever they have available of the right size!

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