Suspension set up

i think there are several variables to the is it simple question, and that does go hand in hand with the cost.

It is as simple as buying a house or open heart surgery..........as long as you know how and can have confidence on your understanding and what you have done. if not then you need to pay, and what you pay can depend on who does it for you.

The biggest variable is when will it be right, what do you need it to be right for as everything is a compromise, and do you know if it is right.......as it is a personal thing.

However there are a few basic steps that will put you in the right ball park, they are setting sag of the bike, and sag of you and the bike. get these numbers within the right area for your use of the bike and you are gtting warm.

 

Words of wisdom here then...sag is the best place to start as it at least ives an indication as to if springs need changing. From there its as much personal feel as anything; some prefer rock hard and others more compliance.

MR will give you a great base set up, then if you want to you can tinker a little from there. Just remember to note down the changes ;-)

 

If you want to edumacate yourself;

Motorcycle Suspension Setup

 

Once you've had the suspension set up for you that isn't necessarily the end of it, you can still fine-tune the suspension for your personal taste. The first and most important place to start, though, is to record the settings you have. Measure the preload and write it down, count the clicks of compression and rebound damping and write them down. Then you have the base settings you can revert to every time if it all goes shit-shaped.

The second thing is learning to interpret what the bike is telling you. I was struggling with fine-tuning, my arse lacks feel and I didn't know what I was doing until I read an article in a bike mag. Everyone tells you to take it one click at a time, but that's no good to an unsympathetic arse, you need to make big changes so the changes are blatantly obvious - maximum damping, minimum damping, max and min preload - then you can more easily understand the effects of each change. As long as you've got those base settings to fall back on you can play all you like. Or if the bike hasn't been set up you always have the standard settings which are easily found online.

With all the secondhand bikes I've owned, I always seem to have to soften up the front end after a previous owner has tampered, even though I'm a fat kid, so winding everything up to maximum doesn't help; as a general pointer, fat blokes need less rebound damping and more compression damping than skinny dudes, although that obviously depends on the bike as well as the bloke.

Spring rates are out of your hands, if they're either be to stiff or too soft the only cure is replacement, and as previously mentioned getting the sag set up will tell you whether you need to replace or not. Again, setting the sag is do-able at home and there's plenty of advice online, but you'll need a couple of mates to help set the bike up. It's worth doing. Personally I tend to work with the standard suspension rather than replace, mostly cos I don't hang on to bikes for very long, and any new buyer is unlikely to want a bike set up for me.

But have a go. It's not rocket science, and it can really make a difference to your enjoyment of a bike and your riding confidence. And doing it yourself costs nothing.

 

+1 Fig; its a good base start to tinker with from there.

 

Just right down where you started from!
You think you can remember, but you wont!

Or is it just dodering old w@nkers like me?

Where's my glasses...?

 

If you know what you are doing set it up yourself. I went for a proffesional set up by Louigi Moto; he is happy to tweak it for you based on feedback as well.

If you dont know what you are doing, like me, leave well alone.

 

How are you supposed to learn unless you try?