My new 950....suspension upgrade.

[Mark Hardy]

Well not really new but what a change in character, after reading the below posting from Kamanya nd all the imput from SGB, I decieded to have a suspension setting afternoon. While it only took 20 min so the rest of the afternoon was spent riding.

This was posted awhile back in the ADVrider site. The difference for me has been night and day.

Last week at the Dutch KTM Orange day I had an interesting talk with a technical guy from WP Suspension who turned out to be involved with the development of the 950 setup back in 01-02 (WP is a Dutch company owned by KTM).

I asked him about fitting heavier springs and/or reducing the air chamber to stiffen things up a bit after fitting 19/17" wheels. He told me that KTM wanted to give the 950 the same calm & steady 'fly-by wire' feel in the bars as the GS. For this the 950 forks are lightly damped smoothing out as much ripples and jerks as possible. To avoid GS riders being put off by rattling and shaking handlebars. The 950 forks are the only WP forks with two bypass/damping holes (not sure what he said).

He said not to start mess'n with the springrates and air chamber right away. "Try these 4 steps first"; put the fork legs flush with the top yoke (already did that), wind up the spring preload to max (already did that too), add 4 or 5 clicks of compression damping (dang, did that too) and last but not least, close the rebound adjusters all the way up to max or one click before max, effectively closing one of the two holes mentioned.

"This will calm down the front end big time and give a much better feel & feedback". "You'll probably don't need to change anything else"...

Back home click-click-click-click-click-click... Wow, that is a big step forward! Well worth a try!

https://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137888

The result was fantastic, the bike feels so much more responsive. The feed back to the rider was, well I did not now about that before but can now really feel what the front wheel is up too. Before doing the setting the back suspension would compress under hard acceleration and the front would become light but not vaig. Now there is very little compression under acceleration and the bike feels so much more powerful :twisted: maybe because now there is no sag in the back.
I'm not articulate enough to put into words the diffirence it has made but WOW......now the fun can start all over again :twisted: :twisted:

20 min....not one cent spent....half a beer and I have a new bike.
Thank You All

 

[SGB]

 

[africanSky]

 

[Mark Hardy]

 

[africanSky]