I’ve been experimenting with the suspension settings on the bike. All I’ve done so far is adjust the preload front and rear.
90% of my riding is commuting and so I’m looking for settings that are not track focused but can handle the worsening Berkshire and London roads.
I started the experiment in the garage late last night following this.
First of all I took the weight off the wheels and measured the distance from each axle to a fixed point vertically above them on the bike, both front and rear. Then I got togged-up in exactly what I wear each day to come into London including the backpack with laptop. A grumpy volunteer was roped-in to then take the measurements again.
For the rear there was only a 25mm difference so I softened the rear preload, which is easy on the 09 R1 (just use an allen key). The rear preload adjustment has a range from 0 turns (softest) to 16 turns (hardest) with the standard setting being 8. I softened the preload until the measurement difference (rider sag) was just over 30mm. This equated to 5 turns towards soft from the standard setting.
Next I put a cable tie around each fork and slid them up against the seals. Then using a complicated procedure that is too technical to detail here (I held the front brake and vigorously bounced the front) I could see that the ties had only moved half way down the fork leg. The front preload adjustment has an adjustment from 0 (softest) to 5 (hardest) grooves showing with the standard setting being 2. I needed to soften the setting but only had 0 and 1 grooves showing to play with so I went for 1 groove showing (adjusted equally on both forks of course).
After a normal journey in this morning which included a couple of small wheelies, the ties reached down the forks as shown in the pic below.
I think that’s spot on. It leaves some room and is also using much more of the travel than before.
But the proof is in the pudding, or the seat of the pants feeling I got this morning. What I noticed straight away was the softer front was soaking up bumps on the road instead of hitting them. this translated to hardly any of the usual jarring through the bars. the bike was less twitchy running over the rutted joins between the lanes on the motorway too.
I shall be playing harder on the way home tonight to try to assess what the turn-in feels like.