Suspension Setup Thoughts
by
Mike Wolf

One of the most important maintenance tasks a motorcyclist can ever do is setting up the  suspension correctly. Don't just follow the manual recommendations, rather, set it up according to your weight and riding style.

For preload, I set my sag to the following:

Static Rear: 5-10mm
Rear with rider: 30-40mm

Front with rider: 25-30mm

If the ride is too harsh, you can back off the preload to increase the sag a bit. Find the range that works for you. Now, set the compression and rebound damping to the middle of the recommended range and go ride. Here are some thoughts on your riding impressions and what probably needs to be changed:

Front Compression: If your bike nose dives too quickly and collapses into a corner, your front compression is too soft. If your bike doesn't nose dive much at all and is difficult to turn in, thus making you drift wide on entry, your compression is too hard.

Front Rebound: If the front end pops up too quickly after being compressed (might feel like pogo-ing), your front rebound is too soft. This could also result in you pushing wide in corners. If the bike does not rebound after compression quickly enough (forks pack in and stay there), your front rebound is too high.

Rear compression: Too much squatting under acceleration indicates your compression damping is too soft. This situation could result in you drifting wide on exiting a corner. Not enough squatting will result in traction suffering and you might experience some wheel spin under acceleration out of a corner. This indicates your compression damping is too hard.

Rear rebound: Wallowing mid corner (rear wheel rebounding too quickly) is indicative of rebound being too soft. Conversely, squatting can occur if your rebound is too firm/hard. Like the compression setting above, you could experience traction issues or vague response/feeling.

Don't forget to write your baseline settings down, focus on one change at a time, and document each step of the way. It takes a full day to get it right unless you're extremely lucky! Regardless, it's time well spent.
 

 © 2006 WolfCentral Productions

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