Been there
Done that
Forgot to get a t-shirt
I enjoyed my HD, what I didnt enjoy was the other guys on HD's. Maybe its different today, but 15 years ago when I had one, they didnt like to "go" anywhere. Lets ride downtown and hang out looking at our bikes. Now lets ride to the other side of downtown, get a coffee and look at our bikes, now lets ride to the edge of downtown, get another coffee, and look at our bikes. Me, I wanted to ride, lets go cruise the reservoir loop, lets ride to the beach, lets ride to the cape, anywhere but downtown to get a coffee and look at our bikes.
Thats when I realized thats what a lot of HD owners enjoy, looking at each others bikes, and comparing chrome farkels. It didnt work for me. I am getting the itch again for a street bike, after all these years of no riding, then the little KLX for the past year really kicked me off again, maybe a new Concours is in my future, gotta check the crystal ball, ( and bank accout)

Sorry to hijack this KLX vs DRZ thread

No brakes, what did they do to your new stickers?

 

Must be fooking gold plated for what those stickers cost me!


Got a fairly standard service and revalve on the the shock, rebuilt the internals, should be smoother. Got the "terrain tamer" on the forks - the full monty. One side is set up totally for compression while the other side is set up totally for rebound, each fork dedicated to the one function and will handle a very wide variety of conditions without having to adjust. Bruce claims this is the ultimate off-road setup and it will now soak up a small volkswagen with nary a bump.

 

It is rather funny, when DRZ is mentioned in this forum, it goes haywire.. It's just a recipe for a thread disaster.. haha

 

Now Thats awesome, makes a lot of sense to do that.
I bet they SHOULD be gold plated, but am a betting they think it was cheap. Shock re-valving can get real pricey, but is so worth it if you know what you need .

 

It was actually cheaper than I thought it would be, it wasn't too bad. Merry Christmas for Nobrakes, from here on out to be known as Nomoney.

 

Isn't it great picking out exactly what you want for Christmas? I always seem to get just what I want.

I bet its gonna be a huge difference in the front. What did they do to the rear?

 

thats pretty interesting, never herd/thaught of that... having one side of the forks do one thing and the other side to the other... cool.

 

they've been doing it street bike for a few years.

 

It was pretty weird to work the forks while they were off the bike. The compression one just pogos, at least for the first 1/3 of travel and then the valving kicks in and it gets progressively harder to push, but it springs back out quickly. The rebound side pushes in mostly just spring resistance, and then slowly rebounds over the span of 2 or 3 seconds - opposite of what the compression side did.

I can't wait to try it. He says the KTM stock valving is two stage with lots of high speed damping and less valving for slow speed damping. The high speed stuff being the small stuff, i.e., what you would experience blasting over roots and smaller rocks and ruts and such. Low speed being full travel stuff like jumps, g-outs, etc. And by having so much valving dedicated to high speed chop it tends to feel harsh and jarring unless you ride at the level of a pro, which most of us do not, although I liked the stock KTM valving the best when going fast, it seemed to soak up big stuff that I just knew was going to be painful, but after hitting it I would think that wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be, so I can see what he means by the faster you are the more you appreciate the harsher suspension.

But he says he takes more of a three stage approach were the oil circuit on compression doesn't really kick in until after the first 1/3 of the travel. Before that, it's pretty much just the spring compression and rebound damping. After that, the compression damping starts making it progressively harder and harder to compress the fork. At the 2/3's point there's even more and has incredible bottoming resistance. The rebound side also does some compression damping, he says while the rebound damping is optimized for rebound, there's just no way around some of the oil flowing through the valving during compression too, so it still has an effect which is one of the reasons he doesn't have any valving on the compression side for the first 1/3 - that's actually handled by the side effect of the rebound side. At least that's what my small brain took away from our conversation in his shop as he was waving fork internals around demonstrating how all this worked.

So when you put it all together, he claims it gives a nice smooth supple feel in the first 1/3 of travel to handle the high speed chop pretty handily which maximizes rubber on the ground for the best traction and control, and provides progressive damping to soak up the bigger stuff, with incredible bottoming resistance.

He says with the terrain tamer that you have to relearn how to ride, or at least, what you can go over and what you can't. He says that normally you worry about the front end when it comes to obstacles and just let the back end follow, because whatever the front can clear, the back will normally soak it up too. But now it will be the opposite, the front will take stuff now that will make you turn around and wonder if you actually hit it or not and you will have to be more careful with the back end because you can exceed its ability to take the same big hits that the front will now take.

Should be interesting.

 

video coming soon I hope.