Originally Posted by
Robert Taylor
The forks you mention are as individually anonymous to me as your own personal identity.
The only second tier ''Ohlins name only'' products ''available'' are the ones fitted to some Yamaha models that were built for Japanese domestic market consumption only and never intended for export out of Japan. The majority shareholder in Ohlins flexing its muscle, and NZ ( as a country of often ''challenged'' thinking ) is taking cast offs.
Not all Aprilia models have Ohlins forks. Right at this moment I have both a set of Aprilia Ohlins forks to service and a set of Showa forks from a cheaper Aprilia variant. The work instructions for the Showas is to rework them
You say ''an earlier Aprilia 1000 model'' but no elaboration of overall condition. The Ohlins product on those Aprilias is fairly chunky in construction but very poor? First and only time Ive ever been told that, maybe as an engineer ( started my carreer with aircraft ) my perception of quality is different to yours....
Point of fact the overall quality is very very high and so is the ultimate longevity. Much more so than a Japanese fork the overlap where the lower tube threads into the lower castings is substanially longer and stronger than in a Japanese sportbike fork. There are 2 current popular litre class Japanese sportbikes that will develop movement between the lower tube and bottom casting over time, especially if the rider likes pulling wheelies and is a late braker. When that happens it is a costly job. The Ohlins forks never develop that problem but if you bend a tube you can replace just that tube only as it is designed to be seperated from the casting. And guess what, cheaper than a Japanese fork to rebuild...
Ohlins road and track forks also flex less under heavy braking and therefore ( the great disadvantage of inverted forks ) will not bind as readily. In inverted forks there is a bushing just above the oil seal and a second bushing further up roughly located halfway between the upper and lower triple clamps. The upper fork tubes can actually deflect a horrible amount under heavy braking meaning the bushings are no longer on the same centreline. The Japanese ''engineering by accountancy'' semi fix is just to increase clearances.
For all their limitations ''right side up forks'' remain a lot more compliant under conditions that induce fork flex, simply because the primary bending moment is happening above the bushings...
Cynically, I would suggest the ''lighter and lighter'' trend with modern Japanese sportbike forks also has a little to do with material costs. Many of these latest sportbike forks are very nicely ''turned out'' on the outside but
underneath the outerwear can hide a whole load of horrible compromises. As one overseas road race suspension tuner I know will reluctantly testify, ''she wasnt a girl''.
The new coatings do indeed work, but only when mated with either genuine seals or the very highest quality aftermarket seals who supply to oem. The coating itself is only virtually a wafer thin ''veneer mist'' Looks like MotoGP but thats where it stops.
So we go inside the forks, theres one brand of litre class bike that for years has had a cartridge with a top bushing that is not on the same centreline as the out of round cartridge tube. To exacerbate that ( and this is common to all the oem stuff ) when the cartridge is bolted in it almost always cocks a little to one side because the lower casting surface it abuts against is not perpendicular to the fork tube! AND... one of the current crop of 600 sportbikes has the cheapest nastiest front fork cartridges that you have ever seen. As a term of relativity last years cartridges look as if they would have come out of the Ferrari factory ( although that rather flatters them ) This years look like a lowest level budget replacement that would be made in China for resale by SuperCheap auto.
As an aftermarket company with a reputation for quality, engineering and performance excellence Ohlins pay very close attention to precise tolerancing and assembly truth. And the product is very tunable with an enormous setting bank of information readily accessible from the factory and other distributors. Point of fact we have our own database of knowledge and experience to further optimise the product performance for our often nasty road and track conditions.
Last year Yamaha Motor Australias road race team raced with YZFR1SP's, equipped standard with Ohlins suspension at both eand poor backup of many cheap products I fully expect some retort by ''ghost writers'' My answer to that is I have no respect for those who make a living out of products that effectively misrepresent standards of performance and quality. And I especially have antipathy for those who provide no backup and those who are doing a lousy job through use of substandard parts, lack of appropriate tools, training and experience etc.
Is anyone having problems with adjustment range with the oem Ohlins steering damper fitted standard to the most current model ZX10? If so we are currently testing a cost effective cure that we think will improve its performance substanially.
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, I too kinda have a curvy figure which makes it worse beacuse im a guy. Well the waist kinda goes in and the bum pushes out. When I was in college the girls in my year would slap me on the arse and squeeze because apparently it is firm, tight...
I wear jeans
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