What is exasperating to me is the thought that you can load 300+ lbs on the ST1300's stock 900 lb spring and expect to set the rear high enough to make the front end twitchy, or solve the twitchy by lowering the rear. With 22 stone in the seat the best you can do is hope to get the shock off the bump stop whilst sitting in the car park.
I'm just talking from my own experience,
@dduelin.
When we tour - which is for most of our riding - the bike is up to the Honda specified weight limit. It used to be more, but I worked hard to reduce my own personal load by 3.5 stone. The only time the bike handled badly was when a rear BT023 wore oddly - cupped on the sides.
I have never felt that the rear suspension was inadequate, although I have noticed how low other ST1300s can sit when their machine is more heavily loaded than ours.
But my riding style may have something to do with that. I ride well within my own limits, and my limits are much less than the capabilities of the bike.
When I got my first brand new ST1300, having previously had 2 1100s, I loved it. But after our first fully loaded tour, I took a short ride by myself and the bike felt very twitchy to me. I mean scary twitchy.
It had me puzzled, but a couple of days later I remembered that I hadn't taken off the pre-load from our tour, and when I did, it felt perfectly fine again.
This happened on a couple of other occasions - easily done, you get home, unload the bike and focus on stuff other than riding. The next solo ride it feels twitchy again, but now I knew what it was and just stopped to take off some preload. Perfect again.
I don't know much about the theoretical aspects of bike handling, or that a slight tweak here should produce a certain effect there. But even if I was aware of that stuff, I do know that it would not have helped in the slightest.
Why ? The reason is not to be argumentative. I don't disagree with you. You know far more about it than me, I know that. But in fact, it wasn't the bike that was twitchy. It was me. I simply wasn't used to a bike with quicker steering. So to me it felt twitchy. I know it was me and not the bike because after a while 'the bike' stopped doing it. And when I bought my 2nd brand new ST1300, that never felt twitchy either no matter what the preload setting.
So when I noted that
@staggart had plenty of biking experience but was unused to the St1300, I thought it worth mentioning that if the rear preload is set too high, the first rides on an ST1300 can
feel twitchy.
