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Old 09-Jun-2005, 20:23
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DSC Member Shazaam! Shazaam! is offline
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Suspension Ramblings

If there’s one aspect of motorcycling that’s a mystery to most, it’s suspension. Just like with anything else in our lives we have three ways to deal with it: We can ignore it, we can pay someone to help, or we can learn a little about it.


Ignore It

Modern motorcycles are delivered with a thoroughly-developed handling package that will meet the street performance needs of the majority of us. If not, there are a range of suspension adjustments that will allow us to fine tune it to our needs, but most of us are happy with the stock settings and never touch them.


Pay Someone

Like any consumer product, a motorcycle will incorporate different components for different models in order to meet a target price point. The after-market equipment industry then addresses the service, special performance, customization and consumables market.

Suspension specialists provide an integrated suspension parts and adjustment service to meet the suspension performance need of a rider with a particular riding style, or the demands of a particular track. Further, after-market parts are sometimes more durable and are often designed to provide a different, or extended range of adjustment. However, even the best specialists are a for-profit business, so when owners go to them to make their bike “handle better” they should at least have an idea of what to expect for their money. Most don’t.


The Basics

Information about suspension can be broken down into basics, experience with certain combinations of equipment and settings, and opinion. You need to be able to separate-out which-is-which. In particular, be skeptical when the argument is presented that you should use a particular set-up that was used on a winning race bike, because you’re not that rider on that track, and using that set-up won’t make you so. For this reason, using suspension settings preferred by magazine test riders on a test track are often not best for a reasonably-skilled rider on the street, either from a handling or comfort point-of-view.

Also, buying equipment used by race teams ignores issues like equipment sponsorship money. It also buys-into the marketing concept that, if it’s more expensive - it’s better. Keep in mind that there’s a lot of product loyalty and opinion generated by someone who has just spent several thousand dollars on a set of high-end forks or dampers.

Damper re-valve kits for stock dampers or full damper replacements are commonly touted as the way to improve on stock components to get better handling. Such equipment can accomplish three things:

It increases the total range (maximum to minimum) of damping that can be selected

It moves the center of the range-of-values that can be selected to give a more usable range

It increases the number of damping values within a range to allow smaller steps (finer adjustments) between settings.

These can be modified separately for rebound damping and compression damping so an suspension specialist’s experience and advice here will often be useful.

When you ride on the street you encounter a wide range of road surfaces, so a fairly-wide factory range of settings is provided in the stock set-up to allow you to accommodate the conditions on your favorite route.

On the track it’s different. Suspension settings refinement will tend to put you into a narrow range of useful damping values so re-valving for this range is often beneficial.

Of course, before you even touch damper settings you need to make sure that the stock front and rear spring rates are correct for your body-weight. You don’t need a suspension specialist for this, your dealer can provide replacement springs and properly adjust sag if required.


So tell me your thoughts on this.
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