I just got back from MH Suspension, travelled 30 miles there through twisty Wiltshire roads to Mark's beautiful house. I spent 10 minutes there while he twirled his spanners before he told me to go for a spin and come back and let him know if it was better. It was. It was a night and day comparison before and after. I knew I had understeer problems but I didn't notice all the other trouble I was having until it was taken away. I had found myself making lots of minor adjustments mid corner, thinking it was poor throttle control and other rider errors. I was often bucked from the seat on rough rides and as I mentioned before I was running very wide on round abouts. Now the bike is steered by thought alone, or at least that's what it feels like. The speed of change of lean left to right is faster and smoother, the bike sticks to the line I choose and responds to change in a smooth and settled manner. The rise and fall of the bike over bumps feels like a galloping horse, level and even. All in all, it is the best £40 I have spent on my bike full stop. It turned a bike I thoroughly enjoyed riding but felt like I wasn't quite in control of in to a bike that is responsive, fast, smooth and predictable. I'm a very happy chap. Id probably have taken a very, very long time to get the settings comfortable on my own. Also, the standard settings were a million miles away from what I ended up with. The changes were made by Mark alone, bouncing and feeling the action of the suspension front and rear and finding the right setting for it. I only sat on the bike to check rider sag. I'd thoroughly recommend him. About Us | MH Racing LTD
If you're looking for difinitive information you're out of luck. Everyone weighs a different amount, and everyone rides in a different way, so it doesn't really matter what bike it was. If you don't care to tinker with your own bike's suspension, then just take it to your local dealer, it's not too expensive at all. If you want to tinker though, it still doesn't matter which bike. Just learn how to set your static sag and go from there. There's plenty of folk here who'll guide you.
I had an R1 set up. The guy I used set the bike using his experience of rider's demands and set the front and rear to compress and rebound at the same rate.
Great isn't it when your suspension gets fettled. I had my Speed Triple done. It was vision-blurringly shocking on the factory settings and with the K3 OE tyres downright dangerous on rough surfaces. I couldn't see for the life of me why Speeds had such a great reputation for handling. And its steered like a barge. I wonder how many return customers Triumph were losing by sending out bikes with such lousy set-ups? For the sake of £50/100 a set-up should be part of the handover on a new bike. There must be plenty of people who sold their bikes thinking they'd bought a pig, never knowing how it could be utterly transformed with just a few turns of a screwdriver. An hour's twiddling on mine by someone who knew what they were doing and suddenly all the rave reviews made sense. Talk about a different bike. It floated along, dived into bends and I could steer it round twisties with my toes. Then I changed the tyres.... Its amazing how much difference a set of tyres can make to the ride quality. I had to take out loads of compression damping to get it sweet again. The Streetfighter is at Louigimoto at the moment having an ECU reprogramme and a suspension set up. I don't expect a Triumph-like revelation in the handling because it wasn't as bad as that to start with but if I get a smoother, more connected, confidence-inspiring bike with even more punch than its got already, I'll be a very happy chap as well.
It's funny you should say that as I'm trying to sort a triumph right now. I'm just going to have to pay again I think. I spent a few hours trial and error riding and I didn't really get any where. It's a mystery how thus stuff can be balanced so well. It's a complete black art to me
Its worth paying to have it done. Once you've had it set up you're got a base setting. Different tyres, load weight, riding style etc may alter things again slightly but you have a datum so you know where you are and making minor tweaks in the future is easy. Trying to establish that datum to begin with on your own by trial and error without a full understanding of the physics involved is a nightmare. Paul Adams at Race Lab in Wimborne did my Triumph. As soon as I wheeled it over the lip of the concrete into the workshop and touched the brakes to stop it he said "Well I can see two things wrong to start with". That's the difference. I knew I'd come to the right place.
