Suspension Set-Up Advice Needed

[SteveNC]

I am not very proficient at setting up suspensions so I thought I would start with what you guys thought would be a good baseline and then I can experiment from there. I have an S model. I’m 185lbs without gear. I generally wear a two piece leather suit if weather permits and a light weight backpack. I do all street riding at a moderate to aggressive pace. I would probably prefer the settings a little soft as I usually do 200-400 mile Sundays and am skilled enough to overcome a slightly soft suspension. Any advice would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[AXE]

Suspension is the best thing you can do to immediately make this bike better than you thought it could be. Make sure to set your sag before you do anything with the compression and rebound settings.

The general consensus is that this bike is set up for riders between 180-210 lbs as for the springs and guts. However, it appears that the biggest complaint is that you can never get the high speed compression setting just right. Ghezzi has changed his fork oil to a lower weight and seems to have cured that problem with the front. I think he is about to do the rear too.

I have my bike setup pretty good and I will probably end up doing the fork oil too. Then maybe do something with the rear, but mine seems to be pretty good for my riding style.

Do a search on suspension and you will get a few threads with some sag, compression, and rebound settings as a starting point.

Here are mine. Just setting the sag with eliminate the front end twitchiness.

Suspension Settings

Out!

[Antigrav]

I think the easier way to start off is have a "known to be good" shop set you up for roughly 50-75 bucks... they will do the sag and probably get you fairly close to you basic riding set up... If they are good they will have you come in with your gear and get you on and off the bike checking preload then set your clickers...they will ask you your style of riding and riding position on the bike and give you some knowledge about how the clicker can work to effect some of the issues you might have.... then you can fine tune by riding up and down your favorite section and tinker with just the clickers.
Of course you can do this yourself, but a good suspension guy will also be telling you about how your bike works under you for your style and how to best use the clickers and stuff...Getting setting off a message board isn't too good... maybe you riding style is way differnt or your position on the bike is way different from the user giving you the setting...

[GHEZZI]

Steve, have either a suspension Guru or dealer set your rear pre-load, it has a plastic nut on the Ohlins, if they stuff it up they can fix it.

Iv'e set rider sag to 40mm both ends (we are of similar weight)
Rear shock -7 or -8 clicks compression and -17 clicks rebound. Big comprimise in the choice of compression damping as high speed can only be altered internally.
Front with standard 10w oil use -2.25 turns from hard for comp (bottom of fork) and -2.5 turns from hard for rebound (top of fork)

There will still be a harshness to the suspension action at both ends but tank slapping should now be non exsistant.

When you change fork oil to 5w it alters high speed compression and the harshness all but dissappears, you will then notice that the rear is inferior.
My front settings with 5w oil are comp -1.5 turns and reb -2.25 turns but are subject to change as I have yet to fix the rear and more importantly, the nearer you get to perfection the harder it becomes to determine if it needs improving, where it needs improving and how do I achieve that.

Remember these are just base settings for me, from there your personal preference and feel take over.

[Lumpy Idol]

Hopefully you caught this before 4:30pm TODAY... http://www.proitalia.com/

[PedroHM]

so has anyone done the fork oil themselves yet on a cartridge fork? I've done older non USD forks. from some reading of an ohlins R&T manual there will always seem to be oil left in the cartridge after the drain and something has to be removed to get it all out. anyone know if its just a simple cap off pump and drain?

[SteveNC]

Thanks for the responses! I will definitely get somewhere to let an expert help me, great advice.