Today I have mostly been

It’s electronically adjustable, usually by servo motors but the new stuff uses magnets. You can set it up in the bikes menus, sport, comfort etc. or let the bike make its own adjustments on the fly according to riding conditions and how its being ridden.

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But how does it know the conditions? How does it know rain and pot holes?

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Via the IMU it reads lean angle, pitch, acceleration through 6 axis, difference in wheel speeds, rider input etc. it cant actually read the road but there is enough data for the bike to build a picture of what is going on. I can see a sensor on the swing arm for reading the shock position too. So from all the available data the bike knows for example, this guy is breaking hard and starting to lean into a corner, better firm up! Or we are cruising along steadily on a bumpy road… make it soft! We are accelerating very hard, firm up the rear compression to stop squatting. That sort of thing.

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On my Tiger the bike actually registers when the bike has taken off for a jump and then prepares the suspension for landing.

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That is class :grinning:

Are you Evel Knevel?

And on a touring bike it knows (via the rear ride height sensor, and dynamic pitch) whether you’re riding solo or with pillion and/or loaded panniers, and automatically adjusts preload and damping accordingly.

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Not just touring bikes, the superduke has auto preload low medium and high, but they sell it as adjusting the bike’s geometry from comfortable/stable to aggressive/agile. Essentially the same thing as it will maintain the same ride height no matter the load.

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Yeah actually like that…… but it’s another step further to take rider input control away.

In someways yes as there’s only fixed settings available, e.g. min max and auto for the preload, but the IMU will set the correct ride height on automatic. For the degree of stiffness (Oooo err mother) I’ve only got road or dynamic, so you have to make sure these 2 options suit your weight/riding style over a combination of surfaces on a test ride.

THE big advantages are as Colin says it automatically adjusts for when you increase the load and you can set min, max or auto at the press of a button in seconds, no spanners required. But for me the real plus is being able to change from road to dynamic instantly on the go to suit changing conditions e.g. going from a smooth A road to a shit unclassified one. As has been said because it’s pooter controlled it also adjusts to the conditions in real time too in milliseconds so helps smooth things out when it gets bumpy within the setting your using. If you think of it like ABS for suspension that’ll give you an idea of what it’s like. For us short arses you can pull over before tricky hilly bits and set the suspension to min so we can get our stumpy legs down easier. I’ve found that useful when going up or down steep single track stuff in Wales and over long mynd on the GS.

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I would actually say it adds control, you can keep in in manual mode like any conventional suspension with the advantage of not having to stop and use tools to adjust it. The only disadvantage I can think of is adding more complicated stuff to the bike that can go wrong.

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I’d hate for it to go wrong after the warranty has expired :grimacing:

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4 years on the ktm… that’ll see me through :ok_hand:

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I can’t help feeling that I’ve been riding quite happily for 56 years without such electronic aids, so I can probably manage a bit longer. Now if somebody would only invent a puncture-proof tyre, that would really be useful…

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I had this in the bonnie due to the tubed tyres, anything else I carry a repair kit but this is meant to work in tubeless too…

I carry a plugging kit on the tubeless Triumph, but haven’t had to use it yet, so don’t know how effective it will be. No good on my tubed-tyre bikes, though. Has anyone got experience of Goop on tubed bikes?

I never had a puncture with the goop in the tubed tyres of the bonneville, but it was easy to install! As for the plug kit, I’ve used that many times on bikes and cars with 100% success rate, even did a burnout at the end of a tyres life to test the plug? And also done a temporary sidewall repair on a car tyre. I’ve done thousands of miles on plugged tyres. Never had as much as a slow leak from them.

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Is the new GS going to have auto lowering at low speed? That would be nice, might have saved my tip off on the XR (probably not :laughing:)

No idea, I won’t be finding out either as even the price of the current 1250 has got silly now at 19.5k for a replacement for mine and I can’t see the 1300 being cheaper. My 1st one had auto lowering, luckily with the sticky out engine it wasn’t difficult to pick up afterwards…

Only on my MTB. When it didn’t stop the leak it was then impossible to get a patch to stick to the tyre for any length of time. I’d repair the leak and within a few miles the tyre would be flat again and taking the tyre off the goo had somehow unstuck the patch so I stopped using it in yhe end, preferring to carry spare inner tubes instead then mend them when I got home in the warm and dry rather than at the side of a forest track in the cold and wet.

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