New Ohlins front end review
Well I will start by letting you know a bit about me.
A lot of you will know me by my old login, I have been around since the inception of KB and would hope I held a little bit of respect. However due to a situation that arose I can no longer use that login, would prefer those that know me not to publicly identify me for now... cheers.
That out of the way.. I am generally a road rider, and while certainly not a racer I do enjoy the occasional track day and would like to think I am "fastish". I have owned quite a number of motorcycles in the past, including some dirt bikes as a teen, then my first road bike was a Kawasaki KR1 two stroke, after blowing that up a few times I bought a Honda CBR250RR. This was a fantastic bike to learn on. After that I moved up to a Suzuki TL1000R, after which I bought an ex-race bike from Shaun Harris. It was a K5 Suzuki GSXR750, it had a lot of bolt on "go better" bits and pieces and quite a bit of internal engine work, never the less I still managed to high side that bike and write it off.
With the insurance money from that bike and a bit from the bank I bought a brand new K8 Suzuki GSXR750, which is my current bike.
I have ridden it for the past 14 months in its absolutely stock standard 'out of the box' settings. I basiclly picked the bike up from the dealer and rode away. It still has its OEM tyres, and has done 7000 kms.
I found the bike a lot of fun, it didnt feel like it had much more power than my K5, but it felt more nimble and lighter. I dont know if that was my imagination though because the specs are not much different between the models. I liked the new look of the bike, Suzuki stylists have done well again. I wanted to steer away from the traditional blue and white, so chose the black and burnt orange.
The other day I got a call from Shaun Harris of Motodynamix asking me if I would like to test some suspension he had. Now I have ridden for quite a few years on the road and track on bikes that are standard and also fully race setup. In my opinion I dont see the point in spending 3 to 4K or more on suspension on a bike like mine that is mainly used on the road and the odd track day. Sure if I was Jimmy McNair I would be using the bike beyond its standard limits and these flash bolt ons would be advantageous.. but not me. But I do know that my bike can be better than it is now in the handling department, but do I want to spend $4k to acheive that?? Not on an $18,000 bike! What if there was some middle ground? This is where Shaun Harris and Robert Taylor from Crown Kiwi Technical (CKT) have come up with a solution.
Motodynamix and Robert are working together to give all of us road riders that want a little more out of our bikes that extra edge...without the price tag.
Essentially the idea is I take my bike to Shaun, who removes my front forks and replaces them with new ones. The "new ones" are on the outside identical to my standard forks i.e. the "outers" are standard.
The internals are where the business is , ohlins internals. I will leave Shaun or Robert to explain that side of it cause I will muck it up.
My standard forks are then whisked away by Shaun to be converted with new inners for the next customer and so on.
So you would only pay for the inside bits and get them fitted. It took Shaun an hour and a half between lots of people talking to him and ciggie breaks to do the job from start to finish. He said, take it for a spin and see what you think.
So we were in west Auckland at Tony Frost Motors (gimme a free trackday for that name), I thought a quick spin out to Piha should do the trick.
Well the first intersection came up and I immediatly noticed a difference! There was no sloppy dive when I braked for the intersection. Hmmm I thought, thats cool.
So anyway I buggered off toward Piha. For those of you that dont know Scenic Drv and Piha Rd it is a combination of fast sweepers into tight 25k corners, both steep uphill and downhill. Some parts are bumpy while others smooth tarmac. A great cross section of New Zealand type roads.
So I set off at a moderate pace, wanting to get a feel for the new front end before pushing it too much. The road was dry and in good condition, and not a lot of traffic. After a few minutes I could see that I could start to push this new front end.
I found I could ride a lot quicker into corners as when I braked the bike didnt dive but seemed to keep its nose up a bit, which gave me confidence to turn in and get on the power early. The front end wasn't "rebounding" back up when releasing the brake lever after heavy braking so I was able to maintain a much smoother line through the corner. So now because the bike wasnt diving and rebounding through the brakes I could brake much harder, later and get on the gas earlier through a corner.
I was still avoiding those horrible ruts or ripples that are in the tyre tracks in some of the corners though. They seem to be only on right handers and in the right hand tyre track, I think they are caused by trucks on hot days when the tar is at its softest. Either way I always avoid them, meaning often making you take a less than ideal line through the corner, or you ride through them causing the bike to buck and bounce through the corner, unsettling you for the next corner, even being the cause of many crashes.
I thought I would tackle these bumps and was pleasently surprised. Although I could obviously feel the vibrations through the bars the bike didn't seem to move much at all, it stayed planted on the road and the front didnt skip about.
The next noticable difference was changing direction through a quick series of corners (esses), the bike didnt seem as if it was changing direction at all if that makes any sense, the bike was leaning and then quickly flipping over for the following corner without any up and down movement of the front, just like I was travelling in a straight line??
This meant that I had to put in less input to the change of direction, resulting in being less tired, therefore keeping my concentration levels up. I wasnt fighting the bike to change direction, it was just doing it.
I brought the bike back to Shaun and was surprised to see that the front suspension had actually used MORE travel....not less... as I had supposed, cos there was no dive. He explained that the bike was now using more of its usable travel and actually work properly, but done it slower so I didn't notice the extra travel... again I will let Shaun explain this cos I dont understand it.
Overall I am very pleased with the new front end. Next is a different rear.. looks like a Penske shock, so watch this space for more action!
Cheers Shaun and Robert.
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Originally Posted by Toot Toot
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