I kind of always felt this same way about this subject in the back of my mind.
I have read many posts on this forum attesting to how bad the stock shocks and front forks are. Many posts featuring upgrades of the stock suspension feature raves about Hagons, Ikons, Ohlins and that it is unbelievable how bad the stock set up is once you make an upgrade etc.. Ads on the various after market suppliers web sites tell us how bad the stock suspensions suck.
But after reading all of these posts I was always hesitant to change my suspension components as I felt that safety concerns related to suspension should come first. For example, stiffening the components might work great for certain situations but in other circumstances, the bike may be running too stiff and you could be unnecessarily thrown or the bike upset when a more compliant suspension might absorb the road change or other change in balance better.
In other words, until I understand suspensions really well, which is unlikely, or I find a good shop that does, I am not going to radically alter the Bonnevilles suspension components. For one thing I find the bike to be very stable under most conditions and it works well for me. So why screw around with it until I am 100% sure an improvement can be made in both handling and safety. Really my only complaint is the front end diving under routine stopping. Some diving you want as this increases the force on the front braking wheel. A lot of the dive can be controlled by effective use of the rear brake to balance the front brake.
The other thing I have learned is to review the modifications posted on this forum carefully as there is a tendancy in all of us to rationalize what we have done to our bikes.
I would call this kind of a mechanical Placebo effect. In medicine, a placebo effect is when a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, since the subject expects or believes that the medicine or other therapy will work. What I call the mechanical placebo effect is when a motorcycle owner, or any vehicle owner for that matter, adds changes to or modifies the machine and then believes that the machine is performing better when actually there has been no measurable improvement in performance. Or quite possibly, the modification has resulted in a reduction of performance.
Now dyno charts and gas mileage statistics are hard evidence of performance. Track times are hard evidence of performance as well.
But suspension I believe falls into the category that is so nuanced that it is difficult to define performance. And performance may vary or be specialized to certain conditions. For example, a suspension may be tuned to perform extremely well on the track but may actually be inappropriate or even unsafe for handling real world road conditions.
I am going to proceed slowly on suspension changes with my Bonneville. Especially since I am basically happy with the stock set up and it is meeting my needs in terms of comfort and basic day to day performance.
Edit: BTW, isn't Chorizo and Eggs a bad way to start Weight Watchers? :-D This sounds like one of my diets.
[ This message was edited by: ChuckofTahoe on 2006-01-16 22:01 ]
