Its a Bolt on, Maybe what I need.

And the point is?o_O

Don't modern off-road forks have enough travel? You need more? I already need a fuckin' ladder to get on most of these contraptions! Linkages on an off-roader? The forks get pummled as is, adding a weak link (please excuse the pun) seems like quite a few steps backwards.

Maybe he's just trying to kill some time...

piet
 
Seems like a good idea to me, It's not about more travel. It's an attempt at a way to tune for small and big bumps at the same time in the way cartridge-style forks do but even more refined especially if they can isolate the brakes taking out all the soft travel. The test rider has some impressive history, works rider in the USA for I forget the brand but it was the Dirtbikes made and raced by Palarius the Skidoo bunch in the 1970s. Just remembered, Canam. Won multiple Gold Medals for years in The 6 day. I went to the same High School with him. The other suspension tuner who commented favourably has a big rep in US Desert racing and Supercross. Who knows how it will go in the future. It will be interesting to keep an eye on that thread, to me anyway.
 
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Soon to come to the new Ducati GP "number something"?
I agree with Piet, but then again almost all suspension development has come from the dirt bike world.
 
I have a long term interest in oddball frontends, they have their benefits and their deficits but lately, there is less happening. So benefits, potentially less dive under brakes. Dive is a good thing as it helps to initiate cornering but it also takes out most of the softness in your suspension, a bad thing. I don't know if this gadget reduces dive but apparently, it attempts to keep available the high-speed damping that takes up braking bumps in corners, a good thing. At the extreme edge of suspension, eg hard braking or huge lean angles there are 3 remaining components left when the suspension stops having an effect to absorb bumps usually. The tyres, the rubber bladders in some 2 stage cartridge systems and the rider's body. That's where arm pump happens, it seems to be a better solution if you could keep bump absorption happening in the suspension rather than damaging the rider. To me, the only difference between on and off-road is the scale of the dimensions involved and how dramatic changes have. So a bolt-on set of triple trees with a link and a downhill mountain bike shock that doesn't add unsprung weight and an easy internal damping change looks helpful. The first sentence the designer wrote was I don't know if it's worth the change but we will see. And the Laverda bit is just how many racing Laverdas have had oddball frontends over the years from Nessie to the Saxons. not to mention Phil Todds mechanical anti drive. I thought it was worth a post.
 
I vaugely know the guy doing it, Laurie. He upgraded the suspension on my Bimota and did a great job.
He's been tinkering with alternative front ends for ages and has come up with some really interesting bikes. At the very least, they are still very functional and he tends to put fast riders on them to test them out properly - be they road or dirt bikes. He did a fascinating girder-ish front end on an R1 (later ZX10R) which even had deliberate freedom in the lateral direction, and a *lateral* shock absorber and automated locking system to experiment with controlling lateral flex.
If you think the GP teams now are just testing frame after frame, with or without various degrees of glued-on carbon fibre stiffeners etc, seemingly hoping to find the right 'feel'... having a system where a rider can ask for a different spring, linkage or clicker settings *for the chassis flex* is pretty wild thinking.
I've seen a couple of iterations of this dirt bike girder/tele front end so it obviously has merit for whatever he's chasing with it.
 
The fact that it's an easy bolt-on is the bit that interests me the most. I was hoping he did road bikes as well. One of the major problems with oddball frontends is how different they feel to conventional forks according to Big Al, and he should know successfully racing plenty and testing even more. Retraining your arse feel as a rider. This should avoid that issue altogether.
 
breganzane said:
If you think the GP teams now are just testing frame after frame, with or without various degrees of glued-on carbon fibre stiffeners etc, seemingly hoping to find the right 'feel'... having a system where a rider can ask for a different spring, linkage or clicker settings *for the chassis flex* is pretty wild thinking.
I've seen a couple of iterations of this dirt bike girder/tele front end so it obviously has merit for whatever he's chasing with it.
Click to expand...
Had a yarn to Mike Sinclair a while back about eliminating patter and he was telling tales of how they took a YZF500 frame, strapped it down on a surface plate, covered it in dial gauges - and started cutting holes in it. Learned a lot about where the stiffness came from and how to adjust it.
When they got to the point of designing the Modenas frames they could go to a fabrication shop and quote the stiffness figures they wanted - based on measuring every frame they could get over the previous several years.
He also lamented the fact that all the yamaha staff who'd been involved in sorting the YZF had now moved on - and judging by results they were back to square one.
There's quite a bit about it - but no pics - in his book.

Not a fan of funny front ends. Saw a lot of time and money wasted on the Britten. As an aside, it doesn't patter on modern slicks. Tyres have evolved with internal damping.
 
Blimey, I thought I was the only person in the world who doesn't like BMW suspension. I've ridden a few BMW GS models and they feel like an amorphous blob floating above the road surface. I can't feel anything that's going on between my bum and the road.
 
Dellortoman said:
Blimey, I thought I was the only person in the world who doesn't like BMW suspension. I've ridden a few BMW GS models and they feel like an amorphous blob floating above the road surface. I can't feel anything that's going on between my bum and the road.
Click to expand...
And that is exactly what many people want.
If modern front ends with high and low speed comp and rebound as well as preload ride height and spring rates isn't enough to tie them in knots, we can also introduce a few more parameters.
 
Dellortoman said:
Blimey, I thought I was the only person in the world who doesn't like BMW suspension. I've ridden a few BMW GS models and they feel like an amorphous blob floating above the road surface. I can't feel anything that's going on between my bum and the road.
Click to expand...
The modern biker calls that "comfort" :rolleyes:

Explains why they "need" all that electronic junk just to remain upright. Can't react if you don't know what's going on beneath you... let the 'pooter do it.

piet
 
After my most recent ride on a BMW 1200GS, I told the bloke who owned it that I didn't like the disconnect with the road. He said "you get used to it". He's a very fast rider on that bike (I couldn't stay with him on the Jota) so I guess he is used to it, but it's not something that I want to get used to.
I also had a ride on his wife's Ducati 1200 Multistrada on the same day and loved it. It's a very capable bike and has all the electronic assistance doohickeys that you could ever want, but I could still feel what the suspension and tyres were doing. It was comfortable too. If I could find one at a price I could afford, I'd buy it.
Actually, the wife (owner of the Multistrada) had a go on my Jota and really liked it, despite it being 40+ years older than her bike, agricultural, uncomfortable and with a clutch that she could barely pull in. She's obviously a woman who likes real motorcycles.
 
On my R1200RT, I thought if I spent a lot of money replacing the factory shocks with Ohlins, I would be able to feel the road. No, it made little difference. Suspension is still crap.
 
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