Owner's Manual Jibberish

[atomsplitter]

Being new to the 2500 Rocket and it's single sided swingarm (my Speed Triple has a single sided swingarm but is a chain drive) I wanted to understand the suspension settings. So I read with interest the tables and how the bike is delivered to the dealer in the Owner's Manual. I asked the PO if he adjusted anything on the bike after taking it from the dealer and his response was "nope." So based on the OM the bike is delivered with the preload adjuster fully counter clockwise. Here's the table I'm talking about:

Now at first blush that looks a little weird that for any condition you have solo it's fully anticlockwise, but if you add a couple pounds of luggage you add 9 turns?!? The solo rider in this case is probably assumed to weigh no more than the average twelve year old girl. I decided that to meet my needs I would need to add some preload so first I should make sure it was fully anticlockwise and discovered the adjuster was 2 clicks from fully anticlockwise. Apparently even the dealer's tech knows the owner's manual is rubbish on this score. Now when I say 'click' I really mean 'detent' because you twist the handle and it turns freely and then you feel a bump (or detent) in the rotation. So I rotated it 4 "clicks" from fully anticlockwise and then took it for a spin. I then reset the compression damping out 3 turns. Marginally better. Then I added another 5 "clicks" and now it's much better. So now I'm getting close to the sweet spot, which makes me somewhere between "solo rider with loaded luggage" and "rider and passenger." If you are over 75 pounds dripping wet and haven't adjusted the rear shock for preload, get thee to your adjuster knob and start cranking baby. The OM is nothing but jibberish on this topic. I haven't started on the front end preload yet but will soon. The damping settings might also need some tweaking but I'll get to that later.

 

[Einar]

Now at first blush that looks a little weird that for any condition you have solo it's fully anticlockwise, but if you add a couple pounds of luggage you add 9 turns?!? The solo rider in this case is probably assumed to weigh no more than the average twelve year old girl. I decided that to meet my needs I would need to add some preload so first I should make sure it was fully anticlockwise and discovered the adjuster was 2 clicks from fully anticlockwise. Apparently even the dealer's tech knows the owner's manual is rubbish on this score. Now when I say 'click' I really mean 'detent' because you twist the handle and it turns freely and then you feel a bump (or detent) in the rotation. So I rotated it 4 "clicks" from fully anticlockwise and then took it for a spin. I then reset the compression damping out 3 turns. Marginally better. Then I added another 5 "clicks" and now it's much better. So now I'm getting close to the sweet spot, which makes me somewhere between "solo rider with loaded luggage" and "rider and passenger." If you are over 75 pounds dripping wet and haven't adjusted the rear shock for preload, get thee to your adjuster knob and start cranking baby. The OM is nothing but jibberish on this topic. I haven't started on the front end preload yet but will soon. The damping settings might also need some tweaking but I'll get to that later.

Regarding rear preload:
Fully anti-clockwise (marked as the solo riding setting) is approx. 31 clicks out, or 15.5 turns.
If you add luggage it's saying to add 22 clicks (11 turns) to get you to 9 clicks (4.5 turns) out.
With passenger it's saying to add 31 clicks (15.5 turns) to get you to 0 clicks out.
Note that clockwise and anti-clockwise are as viewed from below the adjustment knob.

 

[atomsplitter]

Regarding rear preload:
Fully anti-clockwise (marked as the solo riding setting) is approx. 31 clicks out, or 15.5 turns.
If you add luggage it's saying to add 22 clicks (11 turns) to get you to 9 clicks (4.5 turns) out.
With passenger it's saying to add 31 clicks (15.5 turns) to get you to 0 clicks out.
Note that clockwise and anti-clockwise are as viewed from below the adjustment knob.

What it should say is "Crank up the preload as needed if you weigh more than a sack of potatoes."

 

[Einar]

What it should say is "Crank up the preload as needed if you weigh more than a sack of potatoes."

They could, but in Metric the proper measure is in Bananas.