suspension setup

[bazzashadow]

can anyone help
is there a starting place for the front and rear suspension setup
i am 6ft and 13.5 stone (and don`t say loose weight )
i have standard forks and rear shock
the rear shock is on the first setting but i`m not sure of the front

[Steve97]

Four rings showing and 1.5 turns out on the damping screw works for me

[VTRDark]

This may be of some use.
http://www.vtr1000.org/phpBB3/viewtopic ... on#p352880

(:-})

[bazzashadow]

thanks Steve and Carl
it feels like it follows every grove in the road
and does head shake when accelerating hard when overtaking especially across the white lines and cats eyes

[VTRDark]

Don't forget tyre pressure is part of the suspension. That's your first port of call before playing with the forks and shock.

(:-})

[Pete.L]

Sounds like the rear suspension is wound up too tight. Soften it off and see how it feels then.
If it starts to wallow powering it out of bends then you've gone a little too far. It's always a bit of a trade off with the std shock as you haven't got a lot to play with.
Also, if your tires are worn, like Carl said, it will make all sorts of funny hoops when trying to push it.

Pete.l

[AMCQ46]

my bike has always had a slight tendency to "tramlining" where it feels like the rear wheel follow every groove in the road, especially at low speeds and when the rear tyre is worn.

its not suspension as it is low speed, but new bearings and wheel alignment make no differences [and its not the steering head bearing too tight]. my next check will be if the braced swing arm helps, but generally I just live with it and boss the bike around

[budd]

the thing to do IMHO is make sure the bike is mechanically sound, things like headbearings, rear suspension links, fork.seals and sliders all need to be in tip top condition, once your happy everything is working smoothly and not seized or excessively worn then move on to the tyres, condition/wear/ pressure, are they a matched set ? If anything is worn or not fit for purpose then it must be replaced, this seems obvious but I work on quite a few trackday / rally cars and it’s very common to find car with (for example) £1k + of brand new coilover kit only to find the bushes are completely knackered this doesn’t give the new kit the chance to work. The point is get the basics something like before you move on to set up, Once your happy everything working pretty much as it should then move to set up, there’s been a lot written about setting up the std bike and even more about modifying it, I believe it’s possible to get a set up on the OE kit that works for day to day riding, commuting, touring etc but (and it’s a big but) once you start to push on the limitations of the std kit become more apparent, the basic problem is the front is to soft and the rear to hard. Whether you need to address this is largely down to how you ride the bike if you are happy steady away then you can likely leave it be, but it sounds to me like you enjoy a little shall we say ‘spirited’ riding so you’ll probably want to modify the suspension to cope better with this type of riding.
At this point you need a plan, the first thing to do is read up as much as possible on different solutions (there’s lots of excellent info both on this forum and the US Superhawk forum), you’ll no doubt find the most common remedy is front springs and damping tweaks, in many cases this is all that’s required and can transform the way the bike handles, feels and more importantly massively improve the riders confidence in the front end.
Should you want to go further the next logical step is an aftermarket rear damper / spring combo, should you want to further still then there are many options for complete front end swaps, other Honda set ups been favourite here but lots of different set ups have found their way on the Storm.

The bottom line is do the research ask the questions and then look honestly at how you ride, your intended use of the bike and how much you want to spend, having a budget your happy with is very important because throwing money at something is not necessarily the wisest why to go, decide a budget and then workout how best to use it to achieve the required results.

£100 will buy you some fork springs and a litre of fork oil, a bit of tinkering with the fork internals result in a simple but very worthwhile upgrade, after this ? well anything is possible, it’s a case of how much money do you want to throw at it, the first simple upgrade will always yield the biggest and best value for money performance increase after which it’s a case of diminishing returns, for sure improvements can be made but it gets progressively more expensive to achieve ever diminishing results.

The handling of the stock Storm is an accepted weakness so this is a well-trodden path this means there’s plenty of useful and informative advice available, and innumerable solutions choosing the right solution for you is the objective, so do some reading and ask the questions and I confident you’ll end up with an end product that gives you what you want.

[bazzashadow]

thanks for all your help and replys
what ever my bike does it still gives me the biggest grin ever when out on it
thanks again