Can some one explain to me what does it mean that the bike bottoms out when breaking or hiting a bump. I have a 2002 GS most of it is stock, so i am probably experiancing this, but don't even know about it. I noticed that alot of people put fork spacers in. What does that do?
Thanks in advance

Bottom out = when the forks have no more room to travel and they hit the bottom, thus bottoming out.  It will feel like someone taking a hammer and hitting your hands through the handle bar.  

Fork spacers will Preload the spring making it "harder" so it wont travel as easily, hopefully preventing the forks from traveling far enough to bottom out.

If you weigh anything above 150lbs, you should just go buy some progressive springs for about $65 USD.  These are replacement springs for your stock springs,  They are actually longer than stock thus they have more "spring" travel hopefully eliminating bottoming out.  It is also a good idea to preload these since you dont want a "mushy" front end.

I would suggest searching the forums as well because this topic hase come up a few times.  

Quote from: Zhenya13Can some one explain to me what does it mean that the bike bottoms out when breaking or hiting a bump. I have a 2002 GS most of it is stock, so i am probably experiancing this, but don't even know about it. I noticed that alot of people put fork spacers in. What does that do?
Thanks in advance

You hear a clunk noise when hitting a bump especially on the brakes ... OK ... The back of the headlight bucket clobbers the steering neck or somehting stupid like that ... fork bottoming ... The thing will bottom externally before bottoming internally ... so you'll see marks on your fork brace ... or in the case of the stock brace ... you'll break the thing and the fender that it holds up ... Trust me ... I have marks on my 5/8th inch fork brace from a real bottom out ... Of course that doesn't mean your suspension is perfect ... that insane nose dive it does when your brake or hit a bump ... priceless ...
Cool.
Srinath.

In my limited experience with the GS, bottoming out it par for the course unless you replace the fork springs.  I weigh well north of 200 lbs. and I would bottom out stopping slowly from 20 mph.  With progressive springs and a katana 600 shock, I've never had it happen again.

I don't think I ever experianced that, maybe it's cause I'm kind of light weight (145 lb) or maybe cause I might already have something in the forks to prevent it.
Any way can some one post a link of a website were I can get those progressive springs please!