B, you talked about looking at my forks, I thought I’d post up here just in case it was useful for anyone else, rather than keeping it private. The last time the suspension was dialed in, there was no more preload adjustment left on the forks, they were wound right in. The tech at the time (Ohlins guy, FE) said that he’d observed K5 1000 forks varying massively, with some requiring only minute changes to make a significant difference to the handling, and some, like mine, needing ALL the adjustment just to get near a better setup.
I’m generally very happy with the front, it does what I need for the most part, considering my skill level (loads to learn/do!) though as you said, you don’t know you can have better if you’ve never had it. One thing I do want to comment on, is that I find the steering heavy, the bike doesn’t respond to counter-steering like my 750’s did.
At Silverstone, when getting up to pace in the afternoon, I found it hard work to muscle the bike around in the esses, and around town, it drives me nuts. I’m used to the lightest of counter-steer producing a big change in direction.
With the range of adjustment issue in mind, do you think that sending the forks off to be rebuilt to get more more, and a better degree of adjustment would be beneficial, as well as perhaps changing the balance of the bike, i.e. dropping the forks through the yokes to speed the steering up?
The rear is bonza, never let me down, feels great (gotta love Ohlins), but I realise that any change to the front will affect the rear. I’ve played with the steering damper a lot, and ruled this out of being involved, i.e. I leave it very loose for the road at 5 clicks, and at Silverstone, I was running at 11 clicks to stop shake whilst trying to force the bike around under power via counter-steer. The damper has 32 clicks of adjustment, which is mad. Any advice, appreciated!