Since getting my Motorcycle suspension has been an issue… I am a bigger man, and the bike needs to handle my weight and the weight of gear I haul in order to be safe.
About a year ago I had my Sprint in to a dealer to get the suspension tuned for a man of my mass + gear. They told me I didn’t need to worry about re valving, compression or rebound rates, etc… In the end they did exactly what they told me I should have done, just the springs.
Fast forward to last summer and I felt the bike was good, but very nervous over certain bits of road especially when the bike was lightly loaded (with just me). The bike became better once I threw 100lbs of gear on the back it seemed. This was a bad sign. An even worse sign was the instructor and suspension wiz at the Lee Parks class last summer used my bike to go over suspension setups. In his instruction and demo he found my bike had terrible rebound dampening on front and rear, and sag was almost impossible to set with only me on it.
I’ve been doing reading the last few months and realize that I made a big mistake by not forcing the dealer to order revalving and proper setup of the bike. So I reached out to the Triumph community and RaceTech to see what I can do.
A suspension expert on the Triumph community who works with RaceTech gave me a call and sounds like he is going to help me get stuff worked out. He has a site here with some solid info on how the sprint suspension works, and its weaknesses.
http://www.hrsuspension.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=9
I am now planning to remove the front forks, and the rear shock and mail both to him to have him re-valve, dyno, and rebuild all 3 shocks to my specs of weight, riding style, and cargo loads I plan to carry. Then once they are back, roughly set the bike up myself and then take it to a local performance suspension shop to calibrate the Sag and settings based on different loads so I have a base line to work off of going forward.
I am quite excited by this work getting done as it will make the bike feel MUCH more stable under hard cornering under all conditions. Also the valving being more on point will make the ride much more smooth and consistent.
Add this to the replacement handle bars I am looking to order and some adjustments to the rear sets, some rewiring I am doing while I have the bike torn down, and I am pretty sure this may be a bike I keep for a very long time.
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