I was just looking for some advice on stiffening the suspension on my '12 Dyna.
The shocks are adjustable by rotating the bottom correct?
What about the forks? What can a guy do there? I weigh about 210 and when I am loaded down for a trip I notice the front end sometimes bottoms out when crossing railroad tracks.

 

front forks you can buy inserts such as ricor intiminators, You can change the weight of oil that's in there, or just plain drop a lenght of pvc tube of the right diameter and stiffen it up that way , but I am no expert.

Those three fixes went from most to least expensive BTW money wise and effort wise as well.

 

Progressive makes drop in fork springs. Takes about 10-15 minutes to change out the stock springs. They have standard and heavy duty.

 

Progressive makes drop in fork springs. Takes about 10-15 minutes to change out the stock springs. They have standard and heavy duty, replacements.

 

Should the fork oil be changed when installing the new springs? Bike only has 7000 miles on it.

 

Not unless you want to go with a different weight oil. 7K miles is nothing. But be careful not to loose any oil when you change the springs there is a very specific amt of oil in there. I dropped some while removingthe old spring : I was pulling the spring out and coulld not see oil coming out until I got to the end of the spring and it was dripping all over the place!

 

Yes, you adjust the rear shocks by turning the collar. May take a little experimenting but there's only 5 settings. Find the setting you like best with just yourself riding. When you load up you may want to tighten it up a notch or two.
This, of course, costs you nothing, but you can gain a lot more comfort and handling by going to an aftermarket shock if you can't dial it in to your satisfaction.

 

For the rear, buy a $12 buck spanner wrench and you have 5 settings you can choose from. It shows you in your owners manual how to do it.

The front forks can be modded. I don't know what you want to spend, but I wouldn't do progressive springs because the stock springs are a progressive type already. The cheepest thing would be to make your spacer a bit longer. You should check your sag to see where your at...1.5" sag works well with dyna's.

If you want to actually improve your ride then there are a few options. Search the intimidators and traxxion springs post and you can read a thread that lasted about a year. If you read all of it you will get a pretty good idea what you want to do.

Pm me if you have any questions...I dialed mine in nicely with a total cost of about 300.

 

If you decide to spend money on front springs....and if they are available for your bike, go with the Progressive Monotube kit. Dont waste your money on just springs. Youll be glad you did.