Gen 5 Suspension Settings

When you "dial in" your suspension, you're "dialing it in" based on a TON of variables. Once ANY ONE of those variables change, it's no longer "dialed in."

Just something to keep in mind.

Those of us that race or do trackdays deal with this constantly. And we hear that same comment, "I had [insert suspension guru] set up my suspension, it's dialed in now" and they think that's it! They are going to now jump on it and be faster and that's it, it's not going to change, because well... It's dialed in. lol

But here's what it's dialed into:
YOUR current pace.
The current ambient temp
The current weather (wet, dry, etc...)
The current road surface (bumpy, smooth, etc...)
The current viscosity of the fork/shock fluids.
The current road or track layout (heavy braking? Abrupt throttle? Smooth entries or exits?)
The current tire compound (Soft, medium, hard, rain, street, DOT, intermediate?)
The current tire condition, new used?
The current tire pressure
The current ride heights (front and rear)
The current tire diameter (different compounds, sizes or brands will alter the circumference)
Your current body position and riding habits.
Your current controls positions (clip-ons, foot pegs, etc... they affect how you carry your body on the bike and where your weight bias is)
The current map that you have in the bike

And that's just what I can think of off the top of my head. Change any of these things and it's no longer dialed in.

Which is why we use set up sheets and why top race teams have people dedicated to following this.

Picture your bike is "dialed in" and you now feel more comfortable on the bike resulting in you going faster. But now, you're spinning the rear on corner exits. You have a number of options to try and slow that wheel spin down. You can lower the rear, raise the front, you can change rear spring rates, lower tire pressure on the rear, change compounds or gearing changes. ANY of those will alter how the bike feels and might require a suspension change to compensate for your alteration.

But, if you increase the grip, the rear stops spinning you go faster until it start spinning again, and here you are again trying to solve it.

Hope that makes sense.

Those of us that race, we have books of set up sheets, we have a sheet for every track we go to. So for a particular track, we can revert back to a previous set up based on how it was and work from there.

obijack said:

Well I have not had an issues with the bike with the stock settings. But I really don't know anything about setting up a motorcycles suspension. I am a quick rider on the track (upper intermediate) but I have never been taught how to dial in a suspension and what to look for to know that the setting are either wrong or right. I have watched some Dave Moss stuff, but all that does is seem to confuse me more haha. The bike doesn't have any negative attributes that I know of when riding hard except front end could be a touch stiffer looking at how far the forks compress i guess. But again I am just guessing. I am faster on the zx10r than I was on my 2015 R1, both with stock suspension settings.

Click to expand...

I've heard a statistic that most sportbike riders never touch the stock suspension settings on their bike. They either don't know what to do or are afraid they're going to mess something up.

The owners manual has the standard settings so you can always return to factory baseline if you goof up..so no worries. Until you experiment a little bit you'll never know what effect the various suspension adjustments have and how it can improve your feelings of traction and control of your bike. I used to be that way and was lucky enough to have had bikes that worked pretty well off the showroom floor most of the time... until I bought a 2012 CBR1000RR. Absolutely worst handling machine I've ever ridden, the stock settings just didn't work for me at all. It was so bad I started researching suspension tuning and got in there and began making adjustments. It took a lot of fine tuning but it is now one of the finest handling bikes I've ever owned and I've owned a bunch. That whole experience got me fine tuned into how the rest of my bikes were handling, currently have seven in my garage.... and I started working on them next. My current project bike is a 2016 959 Panigale that I just can't seem to come to grips with in the handling department. It is all about traction and control, if you have large amounts of both you will ride quickly and with confidence. If either of those two is missing from the equation then you will lose confidence. Look what happened to Rossi when he signed on with Ducati, world class rider that couldn't buy a podium finish, he lost his confidence.


The stock settings on the Gen 5 are really close out of the crate in my opinion, for a wide spectrum of riders and they may be fine for you. The fact that an AMA Pro like Chris Ulrich was able to set some pretty hot laps at Sepang on basically stock settings tells you how good they have this bike setup from the factory.

I noticed that the factory suspension schools (think Ohlins) have you ride a bike with the clickers on both ends adjusted to the extreme limits so you can see just what it feels like when it's poorly setup.

The setup sheets are great for different tracks but racers are often chasing tenths of a second per lap while you're just out having a good time riding your bike and a good baseline setup is going to make you happy.

My suggestion is to just ride your bike if it feels good to you. When your pace quickens to the point where you're noticing a loss of either traction or feeling of control or both, it's time to find out why.

No bike setup will be perfect for any two riders as everything is based on "feel". That's why you can hop onto your buddies bike he's been raving about and it scares you half to death. I heard Rossi and Hayden had very different setups while at Ducati even though riding essentially identical bikes.

Setup sheets are good for EVERYONE. Most riders ARE scared to screw something up, but that's why we use set up sheets, this way WHEN (not if) we make a wrong direction change, we can easily put it back to something that worked and go a different direction. lol

I race (club level) and I'm still chasing whole seconds, I'm still several seconds off lap records. And setup sheets are worth their weight in gold!

The difference between those "top level" riders and us mere mortals is that we have to make bigger changes to feel the affects. They can feel a 1/2 a mm of ride height change. We need 2 mm to feel it. That and experience. Because of the number of laps they have, they've already made a lot of BAD decisions to know what they don't like so they make less bad decisions now. And as a result, they've run into things most riders haven't experienced yet.

This gives them an advantage, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't use a setup sheet until you are doing a [insert lap time here]! It just means we have lots to experience.

Setup sheets also teach you a lot. They can teach you that you need to be consistent, for one. Think you're having an issue, you'll make a drastic change and your lap time stays the same. Put it back and your lap time changes. You scratch your head and go WTF? lol That was YOU, not the bike. YOU have to be very consistent as a rider. If you're not, then you won't benefit from the setup sheets like a rider who is consistent.

By consistent I mean with lap times, you need to be able to go out in a session and run consistent lap times (traffic being the variable). That means you're hitting your braking markets consistently, your apexes, you turn in points, throttle application, etc... Without consistency you're making it a lot harder to get better/faster.