-
Hi everyone,
As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.
When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.
Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.
Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.
Thanks for your patience and support!
Steering Damper Questions
- Thread starter Pete
- Start date
herpindo
Husqvarna
A Class
Has anyone tried a RockStomper?? I have one on my TE310 but for the most part don't use it as I find it just hardens up the steering which for me is no good especially in technical single track where I like to be able to flick my front end where I need it. Is this common place with all dampers???
fitness2go
Husqvarna
AA Class
That was exactly my experience with my GPR unit, but not so with Jake's Motosportz unit. It made his bike handle well...smooth everywhere with perfect stability and I didn't feel like I was fighting the bike at all.
PALMER84ONE
Husqvarna
AA Class
In my experience with Dampers, all the soft is just that, it’s like off. Or is there some resistance with other brands.
gandalf
Husqvarna
AA Class
I can't tell my motosportz damper is on until it's off and then I don't like the way my bike feels at all. I once lost a screw and at the end of a couple hour trail ride I thought, wow I am riding bad and was worn out. Having this damper makes a huge difference to me and I can adjust it while riding down the trail if I feel I want a little more or less from it. Also, that lost screw is an m4 button screw and is apparently impossible to find in area and Kelly sent me a pile of screws no charge. I only needed one, but he wanted to make sure if I had a need I had what I needed.
fitness2go
Husqvarna
AA Class
What do you use?
ScottyR;66294 said:
Note - I mention GPR and Scotts in this response and these are my opinions and observations only.
What you guys are feeling and talking about is high speed verses slow speed. A GPR is almost entirely low speed. You will feel that in the bars as a heavy stuck in molasses feeling. I do not prefer this (because I ride mostly tight woods and find it intrusive / tiring) but is probably good in dez and sand where you get big slow wobble. Scotts is more of a high speed damper. You will not feel it at the bars as much yet when you hit something in the trail it will have damping to avoid the bars kicking. Ours is closer to a Scotts but we do some internal tricks on the damper body design that allow it to feel nice and smooth / natural while providing the damping force needed. We spent a lot of time on feel as I don't like how some feel, especially in the tight stuff. We build countless designs and had a lot of people try them early on and got feed back to which they liked. It was kinda fun and we were at version 6.3 when we nailed what most liked.
One big difference between ours and both the GPR and Scotts is the position sensitive part. On those designs you get to a point in the sweep where the damping falls off immediately. Then when returning the bars from full lock to center again you hit the wall of damping again. On ours we designed it as a gradual release and then comes back gradually. I am talking about where they all transition from damping (center to a specified degree of turn in) to no damping (to the far outside near full lock). this makes our smoother in transition IMHO.
One of ours mounted, when on the stand people would say, it does not have enough damping. Richard from house of horsepower had one of the test units early on. He ran it at a local and very popular 24 hour race. I saw him before the race and he flagged me over and said "hey, I think there is something wrong with the damper" and wiggled the bars on the stand. He said "no damping, I'm going to have to run this thing full on" (this is an open fast and very choppy grass track). I said no Richard, run it about half way up or you'll have to much. He did not believe me. He did his first lap (21 miles) and came back, hunted me down and said "WOW, you were not kidding, I had way to much damping and knocked it back to about half or so. yep, :>).
Ours is VERY adjustable. At the lowest setting it is almost all high speed. You will feel very little resistance at the bar but will handle deflection issues. At the mid point you still will not feel it at the bars but will have noticeable damping while riding. At full on it starts to add to the low speed damping and will be good for sand and places where big wallowy (technical term) issues arise. 95% of the time our customers end up right at half way or a little more. This provides a lot of damping but does not impair the feeling of your steering.
I agree with Scotty, some people use them to mask suspesnion issues. I do believe though past that they provide security, less fatigue and a smoother steering bike. Many customers Email me and say it feels like power steering. Smooths it out and takes all the loose nervous feeling away. Even on bikes that are inherently stable they can make you feel a lot less exhausted at the end of a long day. You can grip your bars looser, pick lines across rust and trail trash EZer and get deflected a lot less. I do the Idaho City ISDE Qualifier once and a while (great race. 120 miles a day for 2 days and semi grueling) and almost everyone runs them no matter if they have full factory suspension or not. It just makes for an EZer and safer day.
More info here on ours if you care...
http://www.motosportz.com/MZ-SLD-info.htm
Thanks.
What you guys are feeling and talking about is high speed verses slow speed. A GPR is almost entirely low speed. You will feel that in the bars as a heavy stuck in molasses feeling. I do not prefer this (because I ride mostly tight woods and find it intrusive / tiring) but is probably good in dez and sand where you get big slow wobble. Scotts is more of a high speed damper. You will not feel it at the bars as much yet when you hit something in the trail it will have damping to avoid the bars kicking. Ours is closer to a Scotts but we do some internal tricks on the damper body design that allow it to feel nice and smooth / natural while providing the damping force needed. We spent a lot of time on feel as I don't like how some feel, especially in the tight stuff. We build countless designs and had a lot of people try them early on and got feed back to which they liked. It was kinda fun and we were at version 6.3 when we nailed what most liked.
One big difference between ours and both the GPR and Scotts is the position sensitive part. On those designs you get to a point in the sweep where the damping falls off immediately. Then when returning the bars from full lock to center again you hit the wall of damping again. On ours we designed it as a gradual release and then comes back gradually. I am talking about where they all transition from damping (center to a specified degree of turn in) to no damping (to the far outside near full lock). this makes our smoother in transition IMHO.
One of ours mounted, when on the stand people would say, it does not have enough damping. Richard from house of horsepower had one of the test units early on. He ran it at a local and very popular 24 hour race. I saw him before the race and he flagged me over and said "hey, I think there is something wrong with the damper" and wiggled the bars on the stand. He said "no damping, I'm going to have to run this thing full on" (this is an open fast and very choppy grass track). I said no Richard, run it about half way up or you'll have to much. He did not believe me. He did his first lap (21 miles) and came back, hunted me down and said "WOW, you were not kidding, I had way to much damping and knocked it back to about half or so. yep, :>).
Ours is VERY adjustable. At the lowest setting it is almost all high speed. You will feel very little resistance at the bar but will handle deflection issues. At the mid point you still will not feel it at the bars but will have noticeable damping while riding. At full on it starts to add to the low speed damping and will be good for sand and places where big wallowy (technical term) issues arise. 95% of the time our customers end up right at half way or a little more. This provides a lot of damping but does not impair the feeling of your steering.
I agree with Scotty, some people use them to mask suspesnion issues. I do believe though past that they provide security, less fatigue and a smoother steering bike. Many customers Email me and say it feels like power steering. Smooths it out and takes all the loose nervous feeling away. Even on bikes that are inherently stable they can make you feel a lot less exhausted at the end of a long day. You can grip your bars looser, pick lines across rust and trail trash EZer and get deflected a lot less. I do the Idaho City ISDE Qualifier once and a while (great race. 120 miles a day for 2 days and semi grueling) and almost everyone runs them no matter if they have full factory suspension or not. It just makes for an EZer and safer day.
More info here on ours if you care...
http://www.motosportz.com/MZ-SLD-info.htm
Thanks.
ScottyR;66306 said:
Yes, don't use a damper to mask a problem. If you experience things like high speed stability problems then you should work those things out first. What I find most useful about a damper is that it makes the wrestling match between you and bars much easier at low speeds in the rough stuff. That is particularly true of a heavier bike like my 610. Some of the added benefits is better tracking at higher speeds in soft sand. Thats why I like the Motosprtz damper, the single lever adjustment make for quick "on the fly" adjustment to suit the terrain.
Slowpoke
Husqvarna
AA Class
Motosportz wrote:
I have one of the first Motosportz dampers that came to Canada. I also found it works best set near the half way point. I also have a GPR damper on one of my other bikes. They each have their respective benefits and drawbacks.
All I know is that a damped bike is easier to ride off road than an un-damped bike. Sure is nice to have ripping across rock strewn fire roads, deep soft sand, on bar bashing single track and even on the highway in windy conditions.
I have one of the first Motosportz dampers that came to Canada. I also found it works best set near the half way point. I also have a GPR damper on one of my other bikes. They each have their respective benefits and drawbacks.
All I know is that a damped bike is easier to ride off road than an un-damped bike. Sure is nice to have ripping across rock strewn fire roads, deep soft sand, on bar bashing single track and even on the highway in windy conditions.
Damper
BTW I like them on DS bikes especially with knobs on as it makes that light wandering feel on street go away. Makes the bike more smooth and controlled on the highway when big trucks go by, tire grooves and puddles etc.
BTW I like them on DS bikes especially with knobs on as it makes that light wandering feel on street go away. Makes the bike more smooth and controlled on the highway when big trucks go by, tire grooves and puddles etc.
Motosportz;66362 said:
It's also nice to have if you're going to venture past the century mark.
WOW 
BTW did i send you a longer adjustment knob? If not i have them as they are EZer to get to in that mounting.
BTW did i send you a longer adjustment knob? If not i have them as they are EZer to get to in that mounting.
Motosportz;66371 said:WOW
BTW did i send you a longer adjustment knob? If not i have them as they are EZer to get to in that mounting.
I'll take anything that's free.
BTW the 126 mph was an eroneous reading but the bike has seen a gps verified 117 and feels much more stabil than any dirt bike has a right to be at that speed.