Got my rebuilt/revalved TC in from Daugherty Motorsports the other day, and finally got a chance to put it on.

Step 1 - pull the stock F2 shock out:


Here's the stocker next to a F4i shock I've had laying around, and the TC. I have the TC's adjustable height set in between stock and F4i as you can see.

(F4i setup is pretty much free to a good home, just pay me $20 for shipping.)

And a before and after shot - truth be told, you can't really see a lot of difference, unless you look at the angle of the swingarm, and I had the hugger back on in the "after" shot so you can't see the extra gap between the helmet lock and the tire.
Before:

After:


The tail of the bike is 1.5" taller now, and I don't completely flat foot anymore, I roll just up onto the ball of my foot, without worrying about tippy-toeing.

I haven't had a chance to take it out for a ride yet, I'll follow up if I feel any significant handling changes.

 

Nice! They have my twin clicker too and I'm waiting patiently for it to come. You picked up a lot of swing arm angle and rear ride height. Thats good! Probably feels a ton different.

 

Yeah - I emailed them after 2 weeks, and he replied that this was his busiest time of the year and it might be another couple of weeks before he could get to it. Then like 5 days later I got a shipping notice from him. Guess he freed up some room on the workbench.

Wish someone had a PDF of the owners manual for these things. Not really sure which **** does compression and which is dampening - I'm guessing the blue ring on the body is compression, and the red on the reservoir is rebound. That at least keeps in line with Fox's MTB shocks. Wonder if I could contact Fox directly. My remote reservoir stickers are trashed too - would like to see if I could find some replacements. If not - might just get some generic Fox suspension stickers for it.

 

What's that little red plastic tray under your seat for?

 

That's my super-custom, NASA designed, only-one-of-its-kind, registration/insurance/inspection sticker holder:

 

Just took it out for a post-holiday-dinner run - did about 50 miles mixed cruising, twisties, acceleration runs, hard braking, decreasing radius turns, and good ole highway riding.

At normal speeds - <50mph, the bike feels a little quicker to initiate a direction change. Anything above 50 and it has make the bike a bit more responsive, but really I didn't notice a ton of difference. These bikes are just so stable at highway speeds.

I didn't notice any difference under normal braking. I did notice in those few times where you need to be on the brake and turning at the same time, where a little more counter-steering kept the bike from trying to stand up on you, now it seems a little more twitchy in those situations. Like now the point where the bike transitions from counter-steering to normal low speed handling is a bit higher now. Could have just been the one time I did it though. (I'm always in this situation turning onto my street from a state highway)

I'm going to have to keep an eye on the ride height, as this was a brand new hyperco spring on the bike,I'm betting it will have a little break in period and settle some.

I did have one oh **** moment merging onto one interstate from a different highway - they have just repaved the main lanes of travel, but the merge lane hadn't been, so there was a significant lip up to the roadway (~2-3") on my left. It was beveled, but I knew I didn't want to catch the sidewall of the tire on it, needed to come at it a little more directly, so I edged right so I could turn in a little more.

As I did so, the land rover that was behind me hopped into the lane to my left, and the truck in front of me started slowing down for no good reason. I thought I was doing about 50 in 3rd (this was a pretty long merge lane) but apparently I was in 2nd and with the wind and my visor closed up, I couldn't hear the revs well enough.

I hopped up on the lane to avoid the slowing truck in front of me, 1-finger light clutch, down shifted to get out in front of the range rover and walk away from the traffic behind me all at the same time, when I twisted the right hand and let off the clutch I was quickly bouncing off the rev limiter and the front end got light on me. Definite pucker moment. Took me what seemed like 8 years to get the clutch pulled in and into second gear. Was prolly 1.245 seconds in real life.

I got it sorted and focus on the road - realized I have nothing but a half-mile break in traffic of perfectly fresh asphalt that was just finished last week in front of me. Grabbed a handful of throttle and let her eat through 3rd and I caught up with traffic again.

 

Shock (bottom) adjuster = Rebound
Canister adjustment = Compression

First: Set sag on the bike. Google should turn up a million ways to do it right in 10 seconds.

Second: Get behind the bike and push down hard on the suspension. This will indicate compression (down) and rebound (return). You want to have to push down decently on the compression stroke, but not too hard. A stiff suspension will bounce you around and not track, while on the other side of the equation an overly soft suspension will wallow in turns and drive you wide in your turns. Look for details of these two in your riding and fiddle with it. Rebound is mostly important for drive out of a turn. You want the bike to basically return quickly, but not so quickly that it hits the top and bounces (this is known as "pogo-ing") and it will feel harsh. You also don't want the bike set so soft that you experience "packing", which is where your suspension doesn't fully rebound from one hit in time for the next, and slowly keeps getting more and more compressed with successive bumps, until you don't have any travel left. Also too soft of a rebound will also drive you wide in a turn as you'll come in hard to a turn, loading the suspension (widening your wheel base) and never fully returning, leaving you with a longer wheelbase, decreased clearance, and harder steering. Plus if you hit a bump mid turn while your suspension is closed to bottomed, it won't be able to absorb it as well, and will kick you off!

 

Thanks - yeah I've gotta set sag, but I feel it is pretty close already. I've been racing mountain bikes for almost 2 decades. I've been tuning forks and rear shocks on them for a while. Actually Fox's bike suspension is a diret descendant of their moto stuff. Amazingly all of the same principles apply, except on my mtb forks I have to deal with high speed and low speed compression being set separately to get what is called "small hit compliance"

 

Just found the TC manual online too:

http://www.29dreamsracing.com/FZRinf...r%20Manual.pdf

 

I know this is a pretty old thread, but I was wondering if you still had the F4i set up laying around. If so, I would definitely be interested.

Thanks!