zammer
Tripler
1. ill defer to afm199 on the shock length u need.
3. i still dont care about sag . all the way closed on compression doesnt mean the fork doesnt move. the oil still flows past the shim stack for all fork velocities and u might have a bleed hole in the valve body. and only one leg, psh :laughing jk. ya im sure riding that sucked, esp if u werent pushing that hard on the brakes.
4. 11-12mm preload is great. a good range for preload on almost any shock is 8-16mm total preload. obviously, putting the adjuster so that full soft is at 11mm ruins your ability to get down to 8mm. the tuner saying "no preload" threw me off, an odd thing to say. dont forget, preload has nothing to do w/ spring stiffness as well.
i dont know what u mean by "chopping". can u explain?
6 cont'd. the travel isnt the same on most pro setup bikes, at least on the ones ive seen. a good tuner can use an aftermarket fork cart to extend the travel by 10-20mm. the extra travel allows for a wider range of useable springrates before hard braking causes bottoming. this in turn moves the dynamic ride-height around a lot, for better or worse. ive heard the whole reason GSXRs "need" extenders for race pace is because the fork bushings only allow for 10mm extension (or something) and u still gotta go higher.
but rly, that part ^ doesnt matter much for your actual question. say uve found some dynamic* ride-height, some ideal fork position, that allows the bike to turn as good as possible on the brakes... but now u want to brake harder. u must add fork height, add preload, or increase springrate to maintain that ideal position given the stronger input. the same goes for midcorner too. faster riders load the suspension more w/ higher corner speeds, so they might run a taller dynamic ride-height to deal with it. im sure u can think about how all this relates to my prev paragraph for #6 w/ compromises and pace.
funny thing... RaceTech recommends .875 fork springs for me and "roadracing". with the stock fork travel, i can bottom .925 in any hard braking zone. so why the hell would they recommend .875!?!?!. however, that Graves bike i rode 2 weekends ago had the longest R6 forks ive ever seen, 8mm longer than my extended forks. they had .90s and i couldnt bottom them. midcorner grip felt good too.
7. heres the manual for your shock. its interesting that they recommend 14mm installed out of the box. sounds like the adjuster is setup to allow ~10mm at minimum. its all making sense now. https://www.ohlins.com/app/uploads/world/documents/2006/03/MI_SU647.pdf
*i say "dynamic" because u are riding the bike when u need this ride-height. its not static ride-height when the bike is on a stand.
1) I don't know how high to run it without risking tucking the front. I've heard a lot of people like ~535mm (top of bottom triple to axle center) in the front which is about +15mm or so, and 326-328mm in the rear.
3) I know you don't and I think a lot of pros don't. From what I understand it's a start point and that's about it, but just as a static measure of where the fork is in it's stroke, at least it says something without seeing it.
4,6) Good to know. I'm learning shitloads here.
By chopping I mean I can feel the rear end slip and regrip in relatively quick succession at full lean/just coming out of apex as I crack the gas. The tuner lead me to believe that it's just riding too high in the stroke, and I think a softer spring would give me some more grip. Don't know. Maybe I'm just too slow right now for the super stiff springs the fast guys are running on this bike use.
7) I have seen that - yeah it seems to come with 1cm of 'installed preload' before the hydraulic can take up about another cm.
I wonder why it says 317 for ride height and then the very tiny 6/0 mm beside it? EDIT - looks like it can only go +6mm (323mm) then. I suppose I need to find a couple shims. I think that also means I'm running closer to 319 now which is probably way lower than it should be.
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