senseamidmadness
Neglected Bike Adopter
Hey folks,
Now that I've got my sad R850R running and riding mostly reliably, I've noticed something odd about the front suspension arrangement and want to know if it's normal or not.
I find that when I'm riding, the front suspension does not compress much if at all for small bumps. It feels like it's instead hopping over every slight rise in the road surface and takes a fairly significant amount of force for me to see the fork sliders move upwards. As you can imagine this is a bit uncomfortable when the roads aren't perfect. It's hard to quantify exactly how much force it takes to visibly engage the suspension, but the way it rides reminds me of my old Suzuki GS500E when I overfilled the forks with too much oil.
Is it normal for it to feel this firm?
Big bumps don't seem to knock the front off line in turns, and there are no clunking or clicking noises from the front end that I can hear. When I pull the bike off the center stand the front sags down from its fully extended position as you'd expect. A couple of times I've intentionally stood up on the pegs while riding and shoved down with all my body weight, which seems to compress both front and rear suspension equally, but the rear suspension is a lot better at sucking up the smaller bumps than the front is. I weigh about 175 pounds and am not an aggressive rider, and the rear suspension seems fine when set to preload 4 riding by myself with saddlebags. Neither of the shocks are leaking or anything like that.
I have done some work to the front end on this bike but it is all stock/OEM parts. My front tire, an Avon Storm 3D X-M in the stock size, is inflated to 36 PSI as Avon recommended to me in a support email.
When I purchased the bike, there was a leaking fork seal, the original front shock was stuck extended about 1cm beyond its normal travel range, and the ball joint boot was covered in grease. There's a visible paint chip spot on the front lip of my fuel tank where the top of the shock shaft was tapping the fuel tank, and the top securing nut for the shock was sticking up from the frame by about 1cm!
I replaced the fork seals and wipers with new All Balls ones and filled the forks with 470mL per leg of ATF (which is a suitable 10 weight oil) as the manual says, and bled them of excess air using the bleed screws that came on my model. The fork tubes are now perfectly dry on the outsides. I also replaced the extended front shock with a lower-mileage used one, same part number, that wasn't stretched. When I had the shock off, the Telelever A-arm (with the ball joint attached, I haven't removed or adjusted it) seemed to move freely and smoothly with no binding or noise.
The replacement OEM shock seemed to make a slight improvement, but the front end still feels more stiff than I think is comfortable and the shock is completely non-adjustable. The rougher roads here in TN beat my hands up more than I'd like and I'm mildly perturbed by hopping up and over all the minor bumps all the time.
Should I be more concerned that the ball joint was greasy on the outside? Is this perhaps an issue that requires a shock upgrade?
Now that I've got my sad R850R running and riding mostly reliably, I've noticed something odd about the front suspension arrangement and want to know if it's normal or not.
I find that when I'm riding, the front suspension does not compress much if at all for small bumps. It feels like it's instead hopping over every slight rise in the road surface and takes a fairly significant amount of force for me to see the fork sliders move upwards. As you can imagine this is a bit uncomfortable when the roads aren't perfect. It's hard to quantify exactly how much force it takes to visibly engage the suspension, but the way it rides reminds me of my old Suzuki GS500E when I overfilled the forks with too much oil.
Is it normal for it to feel this firm?
Big bumps don't seem to knock the front off line in turns, and there are no clunking or clicking noises from the front end that I can hear. When I pull the bike off the center stand the front sags down from its fully extended position as you'd expect. A couple of times I've intentionally stood up on the pegs while riding and shoved down with all my body weight, which seems to compress both front and rear suspension equally, but the rear suspension is a lot better at sucking up the smaller bumps than the front is. I weigh about 175 pounds and am not an aggressive rider, and the rear suspension seems fine when set to preload 4 riding by myself with saddlebags. Neither of the shocks are leaking or anything like that.
I have done some work to the front end on this bike but it is all stock/OEM parts. My front tire, an Avon Storm 3D X-M in the stock size, is inflated to 36 PSI as Avon recommended to me in a support email.
When I purchased the bike, there was a leaking fork seal, the original front shock was stuck extended about 1cm beyond its normal travel range, and the ball joint boot was covered in grease. There's a visible paint chip spot on the front lip of my fuel tank where the top of the shock shaft was tapping the fuel tank, and the top securing nut for the shock was sticking up from the frame by about 1cm!
I replaced the fork seals and wipers with new All Balls ones and filled the forks with 470mL per leg of ATF (which is a suitable 10 weight oil) as the manual says, and bled them of excess air using the bleed screws that came on my model. The fork tubes are now perfectly dry on the outsides. I also replaced the extended front shock with a lower-mileage used one, same part number, that wasn't stretched. When I had the shock off, the Telelever A-arm (with the ball joint attached, I haven't removed or adjusted it) seemed to move freely and smoothly with no binding or noise.
The replacement OEM shock seemed to make a slight improvement, but the front end still feels more stiff than I think is comfortable and the shock is completely non-adjustable. The rougher roads here in TN beat my hands up more than I'd like and I'm mildly perturbed by hopping up and over all the minor bumps all the time.
Should I be more concerned that the ball joint was greasy on the outside? Is this perhaps an issue that requires a shock upgrade?