A local friend of mine has installed two of the same coilovers that I used on the race bike on his Comet. The ones I used had the two pivot centers at 270 mm apart. He is using the same ones but they are 250 mm centers, and he has made some springs of different spring rates at around 6 inches long. I remember the ones on the racer to be about 300 Lb's on the rear and about 170 or so on the front, this with a fully sprung rear seat. After last weekends racing, we had changed the wheels/tires from 19" to 18" with a 130 mm cantilever type rear tire, and changed the front and rear brake linings as per David's recommendation. Phil said the handling and the brakes had improved very much, and he felt that the bikes handling was very similar to a modern sports bike. I always felt that the suspension on that bike to be excellent and very comfortable, the front end to be very fluid in its movement and behavior. A coilover on the front is a huge improvement over the standard set up. A couple of observations...........they cannot be installed as easily as the shock absorber on it's own, because you cannot compress it to install it. You need to remove the upper fork blade spindle to install/remove it. The shocker on the racer was 270 mm centers this with the Modified steering stem and short type lower eye bolts..........If longer eye bolts had been used the rear lower centre of the upper link would have fouled on the spring ........This is why the spring needs to sit lower on the unit. A 250 mm centres unit would probably cover both types of steering stem but has less available travel. It needs to be set up so as to position the lower link at the right angle before any weight is put on it. The issue of the guard/stay hitting the exhaust can occur if the bike has say a 21" front wheel and if the lower stay is the longer one .........This needs to be moved forward either with a shorter stay or a similar mod.............Just as a point of interest..........For the guard to actually hit the exhaust, it would need the steering to be at that angle and with the suspension very much compressed ...............I feel it would be nearly impossible to duplicate that under any normal riding condition short of the bike nearing a very bad incident ...........Lastly......... I would certainly be checking that the fork blades aren't bent as this too will move it all to the rear, surprising how many bikes may have bent blades and the owner doesn't even know.