Quote:
Originally posted by Henners
MDB is right, suck it and see. Jools has done the Calofornia Superbike school on his ST2 and most folk would have a job keeping up with him on road or track. If you're not happy with the fork after doing some miles get Maxton to 'personalise it' to your exact requirements for £200. |
Ooooh! Only just read this thread. That's a very nice thing to say about my riding Henners, but it's not just me...my riding buddy Glyn is just as quick as me (if not quicker) so it's either something about the BHC region that breeds quickish blokes on ST2's (could be that we get to learn from some really good riders), or the ST2 is really a very under rated bike indeed.
I think it's a bit of both, but more down to it being a very good bike than it is down to the rider. ST's really do handle very well indeed, although my 2001 bike has fully adjustable forks - I think ST2's switched to 'pre-load only' sometime around 2002 and that carried over to the ST3. If you're really concerned about adjustable suspension then fork legs come up on eBay all the time, but to be honest the adjustability of forks and suspension only serves to confuse most people anyway, so I would be inclined to stick with what I had if I had an ST3 and get it set up by an expert company for my weight and riding style. The Desmodue series racing bikes also have non-adjustable forks and as Neil Spalding at Sigma says, you'd be surprised at what you can do with different spring rates, thinner or thicker oil, more or less oil etc.
The ST2 might only put out 85-ish bhp, but it's very, very useable power. You can use most of it all the time instead of being worried that it'll suddenly come into it's powerband and spin up into highside city. It's also just about as much power as most people can sensibly use on the road, unless you're a straight line point and squirt merchant, although it could probably do with another 15-20 bhp and breath a bit better at the top end - just like an ST3 in fact.