Suspension bottoming out

[5011man]

I hit a rather large pot hole the other day and noticed a clunk when I did. It sounded like the fork bottoming out.
Today I hit a pretty big bump at speed heading up a hill and heard the same thing again.

Anyone familiar with this experience?

 

[MIG]

I hit a rather large pot hole the other day and noticed a clunk when I did. It sounded like the fork bottoming out.
Today I hit a pretty big bump at speed heading up a hill and heard the same thing again.

Anyone familiar with this experience?

Only the one time on my Thunderbird when I was run off the road and literally went airborne over a ditch (and did NOT dump her)...WHEW! Never on my R3T though. So you're confident it was from the front and not rear?
-MIG

 

[TURBO200R4]

i try not to hit large holes but not everyone is like me

 

[atomsplitter]

Depending on your load the forks can bottom and then you get a jolt in the bars. You can mitigate this by adjusting your suspension settings. The factory settings are set for "no load" and when you sit on the bike the suspension compresses from your just sitting on it. First thing to do is set your static sag (the amount of droop in the suspenders with just you sitting on it). Once that's done, then you can deal with the compression and rebound damping to dial in the way the suspension reacts to road imperfections. Once dialed in the bike should be very comfortable and handle like a dream. You can get a flavor for what to do with this video:

 

[gadget_ho]

If you want to see if your fork is actually bottoming out, stick a cable tie on the fork leg and go for a ride. If the cable tie is right down the bottom, you're using all the travel. Ideally. you should have it stop about an inch from the end of the travel range. As the front end has no preload adjustment, you may need to check you don't have an oil volume issue if compression adjustment doesn't help.

 

[EskimoPie]

If you want to see if your fork is actually bottoming out, stick a cable tie on the fork leg and go for a ride. If the cable tie is right down the bottom, you're using all the travel. Ideally. you should have it stop about an inch from the end of the travel range. As the front end has no preload adjustment, you may need to check you don't have an oil volume issue if compression adjustment doesn't help.

Does anybody know if our forks will really push that zip-tie all the way to the bottom? I've had one on my forks for some time and even in aggressive riding and hard stops it's still about a half inch above the bottom.

 

[atomsplitter]

If you increase compression damping the odds of bottoming out are lowered up to totally eliminated fully damped. The issue may be too much damping and the forks aren't compressing much at all. The tie-wrap test will give you an indicator of how the forks are behaving. Get up to about 30 mph and then hit the front brakes only in a panic style stop. Do the forks dive deep or hardly move at all? That's another indicator. As weight shifts forward in a hard stop the fork springs compress under load. The rate of compression and release to normal is controlled by the dampers in the fork legs. Ideally Triumph would have included a preload adjuster as well so the spring could be adjusted for your weight. There may be fork caps available that provide that functionailty. I put preload adjusters on my T-120 and the bike behaves much much better during spirited romps. I put fully adjustable emulators in my Bobber and now that bike is brilliant to ride, even with my lard butt in the Tom Hurley.

 

[5011man]

Thanks for the info team. I'll play with the adjustments.

 

[RockOn]

I hit a rather large pot hole the other day and noticed a clunk when I did. It sounded like the fork bottoming out.
Today I hit a pretty big bump at speed heading up a hill and heard the same thing again.

Anyone familiar with this experience?

I had loud clunks when hitting bumps and holes riding my '08 R3T. Eventually I figured out it was very loose fender bolts. Tightened the 4 bolts and no more clunks.

 

[Tripps]

Not since I lost 57 lbs.