Having been inspired by the 121 talk at the last meet. I started thinking a bit more about the handling of my bike. I have never been very impressed with the feel as you accelarate out of a corner but thought that was how it was.
I thought if all else fails i will read the manual and found since i owned it i have had far to much preload on the front dampers I reset it to the factory setting and it has transformed it. I can now accelarater relatively hard out of corners without feeling the bike is unstable.
Ended up doing a bike ride to Daventry popping into Superbikes just off the roundabout where they were very busy but helpful. Then found a great road from Southam to Banbury the A423. You can get some idea on how good it is as they have just imposed a 50mph speed restriction over the whole 15 miles.(life is like that)
PS. Jim was right there are some good deals to be had on bike kit at Lidl
PPS. I also aggree with Phils comments on the forum
Plum
Hiya dick,
I always think its best to stick to the factory settings, i buggered about with the damping on the Vara, you know how tall and how bouncy they are on the rear end, well it didnt help ?
My advice is, only mess around with it if your fully loaded up with luggage, if not leave well alone, but thats only my thoughts of a tall bouncy big traillie, so i could be wrong ?
Gismo
For what it's worth I've found that factory settings are usually based on what they consider to be the 'average weight' rider. Somewhere around 11/12 stone ( sorry, I'm too old to work in kilos)
So I've found that ideally you need to adjust the settings +/- depending on your weight.
The first time I took my VFR750 out it was like a bucking bronco.
I hated it and thought I'd made a bad choice of bike even though I'd test ridden a mates bike before I bought it and thought his bike great.
After a few twiddles with the adjustments to soften everything up, (I was then only about 10/10.5 stone), the bike was much better, but having had a ZX6R before I felt in comparrison it was fairly slow to turn in and I felt I was sitting on the bike rather than in it, if you know what I mean, a bit detatched from the front end.
Then after talking to my friendly Guru I dropped the front forks 10mm through the yolk.
After a fairly brisk ride-out with the said Guru and making a couple of minor adjustments en-route, I couldn't believe how it transformed the bike.
Loading the front slightly and a little more stiffness in the rear shock to what I had reset it to gave so much more feedback and with the extra load on the front meant that when I put the power on to drive the bike through the bends the the back didn't sag so much so the front tyre had so much more grip and felt so planted.
I ended up just loving that VFR
Plum
They are both fair comments, each to there own i guess, i must confess, i like to keep all settings to factory settings unless im carrying a passenger or a heavy load, ive messed about with preload etc, with not good results,
however, as ive said, each to there own, wot do i know, as long as we ride and we enjoy it, its all good,
sorry for any confusion ,
dick & sue mallock
Thanks
Just a thank you to both of you for your comments. Like everything in life the handling has to be a compromise but it is nice to know it is fundamentally right.
Dick
Plum
fair point
I apologise for my ignorance
Gismo
Yep, as you say each to their own.
Whether or not you want to play with a bikes suspension depends on how you ride I suppose and then again if you fit into the 'average weight' bracket of factory settings why should you bother.
As has been said, the main thing is to ride your bike and enjoy it.
