I've been taking my bike out on the twisties alot and have noticed that it seemed insanely stiff. My low speed cornering on the hairpins has always been pretty bad and I've been working hard on my riding to try and improve it. I decided to check over the suspension. This bike has adjustable preload, compression and rebound for the front and rear. I got out the service manual and reset everything to standard specs. It turns out that the previous owner had everything set to 100% hard or close to it. The previous owner told me that he used to take it to track days a fair bit so I guess he had tuned the suspension for the track.

I took it down the Putty Rd on Saturday and on Sunday I did the Galstone Gorge and the Old Pacific Highway. It's like a completely different bike now! My confidence level has gone through the roof because it feels how it should.

The bike gets a bit of head shake cornering at speed, the old blades were famous for it. From what I've read it's not such a big deal but its one of those things that takes a bit of confidence away. I'm bidding on a steering damper on ebay at the moment which should solve that problem.

The only thing left to do is to change the front tyre. I've completely destroyed it, its practically triangle shaped. I'll be pulling the wheel off this week.

Putty Road Fireplace