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steering damper options

25936 Views 52 Replies 15 Participants Last post by  Levelz
I really have this electronic ohlins damper. Can I get a fix or replacement without throwing a cel? :notworthy:
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I was wondering...
Is the electronic Ohlins a Kawasaki spec damper? like the manual ones?
If so can the internals be switched out to Ohlin spec internals?

Im sure the answer is No...

lol.
I think the internals can be adjusted and a race spec damper ECU can be swapped in place of stock.
You can get the Ohlins Race SCU for it, or replace it with the manual damper. In order to replace it, you must remove the stepper motor to keep the light off and store in somewhere tucked into the bike. There have been a few threads on this.

While you may be able to swap internals, this would be extremely dangerous. The algorithms in the SCU are based on a known damping rate. If you change the damping rate, the computer can lock up the damper inadvertently. The SCU only gets feedback from the control motor, not from the actual damper position. So if the damper tries to tighten the damper and thinks it can go to setting 10, but you've modified the internals, setting 10 may be WAYYYY too much now and there's no way for the computer to know that. Don't fuck with the internals.
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I just spoke to one of the vendors here and they think there is going to be an aftermarket box from Ohlins in the fall. Lets keep our fingers crossed cause I really have this electronics damper.
When you say you really "have" this electronics damper is that the word you meant to use? I have a 2014 and a 2016 ZX10R with the ESD. The damper is pretty much useless in stock form in my opinion, similar to the stock manual dampers. On my 2014 I replaced the SCU with the Ohlins race SCU which make it work sufficiently. Unfortunately they didn't yet have one (and still don't to my knowledge) for the 2016. The 2014 and 2016 SCUs have different part numbers and I believe they are not compatible. So, what I did is picked up a used manual damper off of Ebay for 100 bucks and took it to Eric at Velocity Calibrations and had him revalve it. That's been working great for me. As mentioned, you can't just unplug the ESD because it will throw a warning light. I pulled the motor out of the ESD and left it hooked up to the cable and just tucked it under the SCU under my tank so it doesn't throw a warning light. I did a little video on how to take the servo motor out:

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Nice!!!
Pretty sure that's the stock one that you already have.
true. yeah I am sick and tired of this non-functional damper.
I have no idea why anyone needs a damper on this bike. And I ride crap day in day out. Now that I have the met rr on the rear, don't need TC either.
Have you ridden your bike hard without the damper? With stock damper I'll get a fair amount of wobble in certain instances like when the front lifts over a hill in a high speed off camber corner for example. Having it come down and stick the line 100% of the time, even if I screw up, results in a better lap times. I'm sure with no damper at all it would be much worse.
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Have you ridden your bike hard without the damper? With stock damper I'll get a fair amount of wobble in certain instances like when the front lifts over a hill in a high speed off camber corner for example. Having it come down and stick the line 100% of the time, even if I screw up, results in a better lap times. I'm sure with no damper at all it would be much worse.
you're chopping when the front lifts. Keep throttle steady. Damper will NOT do one thing if rear not lined with front but the throttle will do the work.

your tube guy doesn't ride and also doesn't know what a tank slapper is, WHICH is simply dork frame designs from way back to Kenny's time. Do a search on the stunter guys, they have this stuff down.
I wonder if that's a typo on their site? I emailed Ohlins earlier in the year (March 16th) and Matt wasn't sure if they were going to develop one for the '16 at that time:

Thank you for your interest in our Öhlins Products!

We do NOT have any information at this time whether a SCU is going to be developed for the NEW '16 ZX10R. We should know more about what is going to be available by the end of the summer. Feel free to stay in touch with us regarding this, we will be happy to check into this for you again in the future.

Regards,
Matt
Or, maybe they decided the one designed for the GEN4 will in fact work on the GEN5. I do know the stock SCU between the two are different part numbers.
I just responded to that email and sent your link to get verification that it's correct. Fingers crossed. :) I guess I'll probably still run my revalved manual damper though. It works really well.
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