TALKING SUSPENSION: AN IN-DEPTH DISCUSSION OF MAKING YOUR MOTORCYCLE RIGHT FOR YOU
Guest: Hal Massey, an engineer and ADV rider.
Episode Summary:
Join us as we unravel the complexities of electronic suspension systems in modern adventure motorcycles with our guest, engineer and rider Hal, who brings his fresh experience with a Triumph Tiger 900 into the mix. We will explore how the evolution of suspension technology has led us from traditional manual setups to sophisticated computer-controlled systems that offer a variety of settings, even through intuitive pictorial interfaces. We examine how these advancements have impacted both novice and seasoned riders, and I share my own transition from manual to electronic suspension, including insights into aftermarket versus factory-installed options.
Full Transcript:
0:00:15 - Bret Tkacs
Welcome back to Around the Wheel podcast. My name is Bret Tkacs. Today is one of my passion subjects. We're going to be talking about suspension, and not just suspension. We're going to be talking about electronic suspension and how that interacts, whether it's better or worse, and I'm going to let the details of that be left to Hal, who is our guest today talking about that.
With that said, if you've never listened to one of these podcasts, this podcast is about riders who have questions. That's it. I don't try to bring on a bunch of experts. I'm not trying to bring anybody on that is really over the top. I just want regular riders, and occasionally I get emails that I just find fascinating and I'm very interested in responding. But rather than responding to that email and only having that person get the answer or go through the discussion to find a solution or an understanding, instead we record it right here on Around the Wheel.
With that said, this is a non-funded podcast. The only thing that Christina and I do is we use funding from Patreon, those that support us on Patreon, to host this podcast. We do no advertising. We do nothing else on it, so that you can just take in the content that we're offering here today and, with that said, I want to introduce Hal. Hal sent me an email asking about some suspension questions, and that's what we're going to be talking about. So, Hal, why don't you pose that question to our listeners and let's have a talk!
0:01:44 - Hal Massey
Yeah, so thanks, Bret. I have been watching as much adventure videos that I could possibly get my hands on and I gravitated towards Bret's material because he tends to have a scientific bent to the things he does. He's likely to pull out charts and graphs and justify things. That appeals to me. I have an engineering background. My particular questions started when I bought a new Triumph Tiger 900. And it has - I'm not even sure exactly what to call it, but it has - to me, my mind - it's got computer controlled rear suspension and that was my first run in with anything like that. I am suddenly presented with pictures. I'm setting up my suspension by selecting pictures on a screen. I started riding when I was 12 years old.
I was blessed to grow up in the Southern California dirt bike scene in the decade of the seventies, which was awesome, and of course you know we were introduced to things like preload and compression and spring rates and you know it really threw me and to this day, right up to this current minute, I am still trying to figure out how the settings on my screens, you know, relate to something that's quantifiable and measurable on the suspension on my bike. That's how I got here and I figured you were a great resource, because I'm never going to own five different adventure bikes. I'm retired now. Yeah, I could use some help figuring this out.
0:03:20 - Bret Tkacs
I think this is becoming more and more a topic for riders. Electronic suspension used to be just for high-end brands, expensive brands. I think BMW may have been the first for adventure bikes with their ESA they called it, and it's gone through variations where the electronic suspension would only change preload on the rear - or it would change preload and maybe some rebound, but nothing on the front. Now there's electronic suspension that goes front and back and we have some like you have on the Tiger, and the BMW is very much - at least it used to be this way, where they had a picture of one rider or two riders or two riders with the luggage and they would just go through these pictures and you would just pick the one that looks like what you're doing and you're correct. I mean, we grew up talking about spring rates and sag and preload and rebound and that's all that suspension is supposed to do. But not all electronic suspension is equal either and I think that's very confusing for a lot of riders and I've actually been experimenting with this because I'm a late taker. I have bikes with electronic suspension. I've always preferred manual because I wanted full control over the bike. On my BMW, the 1200 that I ride, I ended up going with electronic when I blew out the factory suspension and I went to an aftermarket I was convinced to try the new stuff because it was really really good and the spring rates would be correct and everything else, and I'll let you know what my thoughts are about that as we get into this podcast.
But I think to start off with, Hal, is to recognize that not all electronic suspension is equal. It depends on the price you pay for the bike and the complexity. Obviously you buy a Ducati Multistrada V4S, which is insanely complex and high-end and potentially, as far as I know, the most customizable electronic suspension I've ever certainly seen, and I'm not sure if anybody actually has a better system as far as individual customization. And then you have the other end where you can get a bike that only changes preload on the rear and they still call it ESA. BMW did that with the 800 series, the later ones. Their ESA was strictly one thing on one shock, and it was, to be honest, what I consider pretty pathetic because it didn't allow anything to ever be correct.
0:05:46 - Hal Massey
Right, yeah, and I wonder about, you know, what are the algorithms? Well, let's, let's back up. So I think there's a huge promise here. I can envision a day when real-time suspension control on an adventure bike is so refined that it's actually awesome and it's helpful for a number of class of riders, ranging from beginners, which I would love to get more people into the sport. It'd be great, all the way to those that are experts. I mean just to joke about it a little bit. When my salesman, who's a great guy, said, hey, this bike has electronic rear suspension, I literally envisioned screens that were not necessarily pretty pictures, but go ahead and set millimeters of preload in - some idea of what the shock might do on a dyno. But instead I'm trying to, I'm trying to reverse engineer what my bike is doing, and there's times when I honestly feel like there's two of us riding this thing.
0:06:48 - Bret Tkacs
Well, I think, Hal, the only way we're going to, we're going to actually get the answer that you're looking for and I, you already know the answer and I, I know this, but we're going to get there together anyways, is to back this up and let's bring every listener up to speed on what we're talking about, because suspension is often what people think of as a black art. There's certain things that are facts. Right, we know spring loads and we can do different things, but also there's how you ride, there's where you ride. Spring, the needs of your suspension change just based on speed.
I rode a WR450 for years as my dirt bike and it was set up perfectly for my riding conditions, which were technical trails, large routes, lots of hills, up and down rocks, nothing high speed, no big jumps. And I took that same bike and I went out and I did a desert race with it. Now, when I say I raced, that just means somebody was tracking my time front to end. It was - don't get too impressed if you're listening. But what I found is that that suspension was absolutely horrible for that setup, because now I'm going very high speeds, I'm making jumps, I'm hitting things at much higher rates of speed with greater impact and load rates and all of a sudden the bike was squirrely and uncontrolled and harsh. But if you take a bike that was set up for that desert and you take them where I rode, they could hardly ride it because the bike would just beat them up. It wasn't made to absorb these large travel that it needed
when you're going over bumps and over rocks at these lower speeds, I need a bike to feel like a couch, that feels stable. That's the idea. It should isolate me from the abuse of what's happening below me, but in a controlled manner. And if it's loose and it's not controlled, that's wrong. If it's transferring energy and beating me up, that's wrong. And that's kind of the best way to think about suspension.
But let's kind of break down some of those terms that you and I are throwing around. You know, preload - and you even in your email you're talking about you have zip ties and rulers and we have compression and we have rebound and you have high speed and low speed compression and you have all these different things. Let's kind of define these first, at what each one does, and then we can go back and go now, how does the electronic suspension handle these and is this a good thing or a bad thing? So let's start off with what you know about suspension and I'll kind of toss it on the side and we'll just work our way through it. So let's start with the springs, because that's kind of the fundamental factor of suspension. So what do you know about springs?
0:09:23 - Hal Massey
Well, most of the bikes I've been on were linear springs as opposed to progressive springs, which made them a little bit easier to deal with in terms of the math.
0:09:33 - Bret Tkacs
