Ducati Sporting Club UK > Model Specific - Discussion, Technical Problems and Help > Supersports: SS / SuperSport / Supersport 950 > Hard suspension on my 900ss

[Tim Hall]

The suspension on my 1992 900ss seems to be quite hard compared to what I'm used to. I've softened front and rear compression damping as much as possible - but it still gives a hard ride. The rear shock is standard length. HAs anyone else got ideas - softer springs in the front and rear, new dampers? If so where can I get some?
Any thoughts welcome. cheers.

[andys 900ss]

Totally normal Tim,

It's a Duke thing, as you get used to them you'll realise why. Mine is even harder as had hyper-pro upgrade.

Andy

[Jools]

Suspension is a very personal thing.

If you think about it, with a bike like your SS weighing about 180Kg by the time you put a rider of, let's suppose, 70-80Kg on it you've got an all up weight of about 250-260Kg - and the rider makes up about 1/3rd of that. Ducati will have designed the bike with an average sort of weight in mind and given you pre-load adjustments on the springs to tweak it a bit depending on where you are in that average weight range, but if you're a flyweight or a real heavyweight, you may still find that the suspension is too hard or too soft and you'll have to start thinking about different springs.

Then there is the issue of what you want to do on the bike. Big miles on straight-ish roads? Scratching on A and B roads? Trackdays? They'll all need a different suspension set-up. A bike set up for trackdays might not be the ideal companion for a trip to the south of France. It's all a compromise and only you can judge the sort of compromise you want to make based on the riding you do.

Changing the compression or rebound won't help change the stiffness of the suspension. The way I think about it, it's the springs rate (or stiffness) that will determine how much it will compress under a given load, the damping will govern how quickly it gets to that level of compression. Bear in mind that in the era your Duke came from they had a reputation for being oversprung and underdamped - I think I got that the right way round.

And, you don't say what bike you're used to. Are you used to a Pan European or a CBR? To a certain extent the stiffly sprung bit is part of the whole Ducati experience.

Don't take my word as gospel though - I might be talking crap. If you really want to set it up to suit you go to a suspension specialist, but if you're happy to tinker then try and find the factory settings for your bike (they're ususally in the handbook but that may not have survived since 1992) and set it back to those. Ride the bike for a while until you get used to it, then work out what you want to do from there.