There are undoubtedly some top suspension gurus on here who can look away now, but to many of us suspension tuning is a bit of a black art.
Anyway my bro Bob is good friends with ex-racer Mick Grant, the pair of them are endlessly adjusting, altering and modifying their Velocettes to make them go faster handle better and stop quicker.
Well Bob recently had a ride on my R80r and he really loved it, and he was telling Mick about it on Thursday this week, Mick said he’d like to see it, so as Bob was popping over to get Mick to adjust the damping on his trick Velo-Maxton forks he asked if I’d pop my bike over for Mick to have a ride on.
I thought that this might be a good opportunity to get my rear suspension adjusted by someone who knew what they were doing, I’d been finding the ride a wee bit firm and choppy even though I’d slacked the rear spring to its full soft position and damper to two clicks from soft.
Anyway to cut a long story short, before Mick took my bike out I asked him if he’d have a look at the rear suspension, so I whipped the seat off and side panel while Mick went for his ‘C’ spanner.
He said it’ll only take a few minutes, just hold the handlebars while I bounce it, first he slacked the damper to fully off, then he bounced the rear end once and tightened the rear spring a couple of clicks and did the same again, he kept repeating the procedure until the spring was on full compression and said that’s about it!
It took him all of 3 minutes from start to finish.
That 3 minutes of adjustment has made a big improvement in the ride quality and the handling of my bike…..bloody brilliant!
Mick fully explained the effects of how a soft spring causes a hard ride and poor handling…..at 78 he still knows a thing or too, however the moral of the story is that to the layman (me in this case) things are not always what they seem.
Setting a rear spring to a softer position does not necessarily mean a softer more comfortable ride.
I’ve posted this in the hope that some may find it useful, the settings that we ended up with are rebound damper screw (photo) is fully soft and rear spring (photo) is fully hard….and it works a treat!
Anyway my bro Bob is good friends with ex-racer Mick Grant, the pair of them are endlessly adjusting, altering and modifying their Velocettes to make them go faster handle better and stop quicker.
Well Bob recently had a ride on my R80r and he really loved it, and he was telling Mick about it on Thursday this week, Mick said he’d like to see it, so as Bob was popping over to get Mick to adjust the damping on his trick Velo-Maxton forks he asked if I’d pop my bike over for Mick to have a ride on.
I thought that this might be a good opportunity to get my rear suspension adjusted by someone who knew what they were doing, I’d been finding the ride a wee bit firm and choppy even though I’d slacked the rear spring to its full soft position and damper to two clicks from soft.
Anyway to cut a long story short, before Mick took my bike out I asked him if he’d have a look at the rear suspension, so I whipped the seat off and side panel while Mick went for his ‘C’ spanner.
He said it’ll only take a few minutes, just hold the handlebars while I bounce it, first he slacked the damper to fully off, then he bounced the rear end once and tightened the rear spring a couple of clicks and did the same again, he kept repeating the procedure until the spring was on full compression and said that’s about it!
It took him all of 3 minutes from start to finish.
That 3 minutes of adjustment has made a big improvement in the ride quality and the handling of my bike…..bloody brilliant!
Mick fully explained the effects of how a soft spring causes a hard ride and poor handling…..at 78 he still knows a thing or too, however the moral of the story is that to the layman (me in this case) things are not always what they seem.
Setting a rear spring to a softer position does not necessarily mean a softer more comfortable ride.
I’ve posted this in the hope that some may find it useful, the settings that we ended up with are rebound damper screw (photo) is fully soft and rear spring (photo) is fully hard….and it works a treat!
