Joined May 2014
184 Posts | 0+
Long Island
You've seen the anticipation.
You've seen the installation.
You've seen the first impressions.
Now, the review.
If you have the money to spend, do it. Have a set made to your body weight and riding needs and put them in or have them put in.
After a few weeks of riding around with my new fork internals, I'm finally at the point where I have it dialed in so that it feels the way the bike should have felt from the factory. It rides very well. Bumps don't upset it. And New York's 5 boros and suburbs of Long Island have plenty of bumps. Speed bump sized mounds of asphalt between sections of pavement. Ruts and potholes. I aim for them now.
I rode around for a while without having set suspension preload and sag because I didn't have anyone to help me hold up the bike. I dialed it in to the point of it being plush. I was happy, but knew it could get better and that preload would have to be set correctly to get the most out of the suspension. So because I didn't ask anyone to help I devised a way to do it myself (knocking the bike over into my car in the process.... *******) and managed to get the sag set up to a very close approximation of what the experts recommend. Then I rode the bike and it didn't feel like the same bike at all. It felt higher, for one. It felt stiff, for another. That's when I realized that the compression and rebound settings I had before the preload was set correctly were compensating for the improper preload adjustments. So I backed off compression and let the preloading do the work. Ahh, much better. I backed off the rebound a little bit too in order to allow the spring preload to recover from bumps more naturally. Ahh, even better! But still, a bit stiff. I then rode a bit, backed off the preload a bit, rode a bit more, backed off preload a bit more, both front and rear. Then I hit the sweet spot. I had cranked in too much preload before.
Planted. Confident. Unphased. Not squirrel-like. More gazelle-like. There is no more handlebar judder indicating every imperfection in the road. No wallow either. Brake dive that's just enough to plant the front end, not make it feel like you're about to lose it. It rides better than any car I've ever owned. I'd say it's pretty close to the way the KTM Duke rode, with it's top-shelf WP Suspension. Sure it's not nearly as adjustable (high and low speed damping adjustments and so on), but it's a marked improvement over stock that makes me hope the rest of the bike proves to be good enough to hang on to.
I don't want to be one of those that puts lots of money into it, has electrical gremlins and limp mode, burned coils etc and needs to bail out before the warranty expires. If the bike manages to stay running and riding just like it is now, it'd be one I could see riding for a long time.
You've seen the installation.
You've seen the first impressions.
Now, the review.
If you have the money to spend, do it. Have a set made to your body weight and riding needs and put them in or have them put in.
After a few weeks of riding around with my new fork internals, I'm finally at the point where I have it dialed in so that it feels the way the bike should have felt from the factory. It rides very well. Bumps don't upset it. And New York's 5 boros and suburbs of Long Island have plenty of bumps. Speed bump sized mounds of asphalt between sections of pavement. Ruts and potholes. I aim for them now.
I rode around for a while without having set suspension preload and sag because I didn't have anyone to help me hold up the bike. I dialed it in to the point of it being plush. I was happy, but knew it could get better and that preload would have to be set correctly to get the most out of the suspension. So because I didn't ask anyone to help I devised a way to do it myself (knocking the bike over into my car in the process.... *******) and managed to get the sag set up to a very close approximation of what the experts recommend. Then I rode the bike and it didn't feel like the same bike at all. It felt higher, for one. It felt stiff, for another. That's when I realized that the compression and rebound settings I had before the preload was set correctly were compensating for the improper preload adjustments. So I backed off compression and let the preloading do the work. Ahh, much better. I backed off the rebound a little bit too in order to allow the spring preload to recover from bumps more naturally. Ahh, even better! But still, a bit stiff. I then rode a bit, backed off the preload a bit, rode a bit more, backed off preload a bit more, both front and rear. Then I hit the sweet spot. I had cranked in too much preload before.
Planted. Confident. Unphased. Not squirrel-like. More gazelle-like. There is no more handlebar judder indicating every imperfection in the road. No wallow either. Brake dive that's just enough to plant the front end, not make it feel like you're about to lose it. It rides better than any car I've ever owned. I'd say it's pretty close to the way the KTM Duke rode, with it's top-shelf WP Suspension. Sure it's not nearly as adjustable (high and low speed damping adjustments and so on), but it's a marked improvement over stock that makes me hope the rest of the bike proves to be good enough to hang on to.
I don't want to be one of those that puts lots of money into it, has electrical gremlins and limp mode, burned coils etc and needs to bail out before the warranty expires. If the bike manages to stay running and riding just like it is now, it'd be one I could see riding for a long time.
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