Harsh Cer Forks.

Good stuff, Vince. It's encouraging to follow your journey with the suspension and tyre setup and witness you coming out of it happy and satisfied that you gave it a crack, learnt some shaez and enjoyed the experience ... AND ended up with a bike you love even more! I think I've been spoilt riding an SF, which is a ridiculously forgiving bike in terms of setup, but I appreciate your determination and I've enjoyed the read.
 
This has been a great thread Vince. Real world stuff sorting a bike to suit the rider. You have tried the should be experts, and advice has common from every angle and you have held out and we've been along for the lesson. It has shown that fitting emulators isn't always just an instant fix, and otherwise getting a bike to handle to your satisfaction takes perserverence, and we have all learnt from your experience.
The piss taking is a problem in that unlike face to face where you can see the grin behind a mate doing it, on the net it is impossible to know. I would say that there are plenty of people who hold back on posting things for fear of being ridiculed.
 
It takes all kinds to make a world, and plenty are out there and even then they have opinions and deserve the space to express them. Its very unfasionable to quote that Frenchy Voltar these days. I leave it there for those that might need a google brake.
 
Ugh now I have to catch up with this thread, as I bailed at about page 100.

Yellow springs in now with 2 turns, stock 4 holes and new tyre front (matching back) AM Road Rider.

Praying that it works and I don?t have to do some late night reading ;)
 
So for a while, I have not liked some kicking on squared edged bumps on both ends of the bike. The bike works great on little round bumps but every now and then I hit something substantial and the fork spring reacts but the damping does nothing to absorb it. It has the recommended by Race Tech 15wt before the change. I tried 20wt fork oil a while back and liked it but at that time the slow speed compression damping was still very harsh. It's now nice and compliant, maybe to compliant so today its back to 20wt at 140mm, I need to slow the fork reaction down a bit, anyway it will be interesting to see what effect it has. I hope it firms up all the Compression a touch and defiantly firms rebound slowing the fork action and absorbing big hits more but keeping all the travel I have available, that's 135mm shown on the fork cable tie for big hits on the Snowy Run. I also upped the Icons from No3 to 4. I would have loved to try that on the Snowy Run but it was too hard to do with the soft panniers strapped on.By pushing the rear shock bump stop down it was using all its travel on the Snowy Run, that's minimum preload and No3 and with some luggage. I will see what No4 does and if I need one click of preload to avoid bottoming now with no luggage.


 
So I did the 20 wt fork oil change using my typical 130mm all bits out and fully compressed, and did a small ride to Martys where he did a brake flush, Thanks again. After this slowish suburban run, I measured the travel used including me hitting big speed bumps hard and it was 105mm. The action was firm and I liked it but it was 135mm when using 15wt so 30mm was missing. Mmm. So today I changed the oil level to 185mm. That's a 55mm drop in oil level, I have learned before that you need to make big changes to get a notable effect. So I did the bounce test and it looks like travel hasn't changed, BTW I checked and the Emulators are still under that oil level. We have a ride tomorrow so that will be a good test. I have been checking travel on the rear shocks and it's been bottoming a bit, so I went up 1 click on spring preload and will check that as well.
 
So I did the 300k ride today over the usual combination of smooth expressways to rough as guts country lanes. A good test for High-Speed Compression Damping are those Sewer type manhole covers used on the Airport Expressway and the bike glided over these nicely, the bike used to kick violently before. The bike now has 20wt fork oil at 185mm fully compressed and all bits out. It used 110mm of travel still missing 30ish mm. Years ago I added 5 stainless washers under the fork cap to get a good sag figure, that's approx 10mm of added preload so next, I will check the sag with these and without and see if pulling them will find the missing 30mm of travel. I also tried one click of spring preload on the Icon shocks, much too hard. So that's back to zero clicks, I tried Damping No 4 and that was unpleasant as well. So next time it's back to Damping 1 and 2. The biggest change was the new front tyre, its the same T30 Bridgestone used before. Held a line beautifully and tipped in securely even on the goat tracks.
 
Time for a radical rethink, I don't like the way this is going. We did a ride to Lagoona a couple of weeks back and both the bike and I didn't like the way it handles rough roads. I couldn't really say why other than it was a bit uncomfortable and vague. I needed to just grit my teeth and hang on, it was moving around more than I liked. Nothing drastic, just not planted. I haven't ridden a lot of other Laverdas but one I have is the ex Doug Home 6 plug bike and it had a great frontend. I also had a chat with the bloke who originally owned that bike and fitted the Emulators to it before Doug bought it. A bloke recently called Woody. That's Chris Pritt, he tells me its Emulator springs are set at 3 turns of preload, which's much firmer than mine. The road I have been going down is heavier weight oil and lower damping setting, so for shits and giggles, I am going to try a lighter oil and firmer damping. BTW that firmer slow speed compression setting or Emulator spring preload in other words. So that's leaving the high-speed compression where it is, 4 holes in the Emulator plate and I like the way it now absorbed square-edged bumps, eg expansion joint type bumps and corrugations. I have never tried 10wt with 4 holes in the plate so it should be interesting. Race Teck recommends 15wt in all their tech reports so that's where I started and then went to 20 to see what would happen. I hope to find those missing 30mm of travel and get it behaving a bit better on rough roads. Less teeth gritting.
 
Quite a few years ago I was sitting next to a bloke, well respected Laverda Engineer at The Khancoban pub having dinner on a Snowy Ride and I asked him if he knew what effect drilling another hole in the plate section of an Emulator would have, he said no he didn't and that I should give it a go and see. It's all his fault this thread. No names.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top