Front Suspension

[SteveR]

This may be already dealt with--What is the best way to lower the front forks and what could be the gain? I know how to by using a jack under the front of the engine--what I'm trying to accomplish is better high speed stability..and I'm running a ct and bt45. It seems to be the case that high speed stability depends on the cross-winds or dirty air....I weigh about 175 ride with no passenger...don't know if adjusting rear suspension hard or soft is correct. thanks for any info. Steve R

 

[dduelin]

Lowering the forks acts to reduce trail and quicken steering - the opposite of what you seemingly want to do. What seems to work best on the 1300 is to add rear spring preload and raise rear ride height. This is counter intuitive because raising the rear is the same as lowering the front but the 1300 is under sprung for all but the lightest of riders. As the bike goes very fast the front end gets light and when the rear starts pogoing up and down on that 900 lb spring the bike starts wallowing around the headstock - the so called Pan weave.

I have my forks dropped 5 mm but I originally raised the front ride height by 11 mm with preload so I only offset 5 of that 11. I allow a modest amount of rear sag to keep the steering geometry from being too slow.