For a guy that is 215 pounds, for general street use with it leaning towards handling performance rather than comfort, what are some good settings for the front and rear suspension?

Also, if I drop 1 tooth on the front sprocket to gain some acceleration, how much top speed am I likely to be sacrificing?

 

Oh, and before I forget, what is the stock sprocket size on the front? I might want to go down 1 gear, but I don't know how many teeth that would be, and 10 minutes on Google has turned up nothing... hehe

 

Go HERE and read.

Front sprocket is 16 and I believe rear is 46.

 

Cool. My concern is that dropping one tooth would give better acceleration but cost me too much top speed. I would like to make the acceleration horder and more snappy, but not if it drops 20mph off the top speed and has the motor screaming all the time.

I want to gain a bit more acceleration but not sacrifice too much. Where is the middle ground?

 

Droping one tooth is about 7 MPH drop in speed at 60 MPH, i.e. says 60 MPH but will be close to 53 MPH on GPS. My feeling after doing so is that it feels like droping 1/2 gear.

On the suspension the above link is a great starter on understanding. If you go to the Racetech website (www. racetech.com) they have a customer spring rate calculator for both fork and shock. You will see that the springs are really under rated for your weight. The problem with putting in stiffer springs is that you start to overload the dampening circuits (compression and rebound). If you start with a lot of twisties and/track days you will shred tires quicker due mostly to lack of rebound adjustability.

Here is another great site with F4i, 600RR, and 1000RR info on suspsension and other good stuff.

www.peterverdonedesigns.com

Good Luck

 

Hmmm... So am I better off just leaving it alone at the factory settings? I mean, it seems to ride fine, but this is the first bike I have had that came with all the adjustments, so I wouldn't know if it is how it is supposed to feel or not.

As for the sprocket, I might just leave that alone for now. Dropping 7mph at 60mph on the speedo is a 10% difference, and I am not sure that I like that.

 

Mostly you want to set up your sag (preload the springs) front and rear. There is a 'how to' in the link I posted that'll show ya how to do it. You'll need at least one other person (two is better) to help you with this.

 

Well, I see someone pointed you to the SportRider website... only problem is that won't help you much at your weight. Our club had a suspension clinic this past weekend and we set the sag (or attempted to) on about 15 bikes. Five of those bikes were F4is with riders ranging in weight from about 160 to 240 lbs. ONLY ONE bike could be dialed in completely with the stock springs and that was the 160 lb guy. For everybody else, the stock Honda springs are just too soft. So, if you are serious, give Traxxion Dynamics or RaceTech a call and get yourself a set of front springs that will have the correct spring rate for your weight. Only then will you get the front end to handle correctly for your 215 lbs. At the rear you are probably going to have to run the rear shock at the highest preload setting (7). Then be careful with the rebound setting because the darn thing is going to want to hop over bumps at that much preload. I run my compression and rebound both at 3/4 turn back from full hard. I did not notice the shock "packing up," but then I am not the fastest nor most agressive rider out there. It was interesting that at our clinic none of the F4i riders had the rear shock set lower than 6 on preload... most ran theirs at 7.

I weigh 235 and now have a set of Traxxion springs in the front and am installing a Penske 8981 shock in the rear that has been set up for my weight. Trust me, you need to do the same if you are serious about getting this bike to handle. I'd almost bet that to get the bike to turn in quickly you have to soften the preload in the front and crank up the back preload (to get the proper rack)... and I'll bet the thing scares the crap out of you when the front end dives all the way to the grond under hard braking. At least that's what mine did to me until I changed the springs.

This is my first post to this board, so maybe some folks will think I'm full of it, but I've been building my 2002 F4i up for two months now. I run a full Akrapovic competition exhaust, PCIII, K&N, Ape CCT adjuster, Michelin Pilot Powers, and now have tackled the suspension. I run Deals Gap about once a week but am only an advanced beginner compared to most of the guys I ride with. But, the change in front springs alone allowed me to cut my time over the Gap by 1.5 minutes by my second pass.

My regards- pm me if you want to see pictures of my spring change. I also posted a writeup over at EastTNRiders.com in the modification forum.

Steve

 

I went down 1 on my f4i and I noticed quite a bit of difference in acceleration. At 8 grand, holding it steady then slapping it open, the front wheel came up, no clutch. Yes, if you drop a tooth, you will lose top end. But also keep in mind, that at stock set up, the bike already differs between actual mph and whatever is on the speedo. I definitaly thought it was worth it. I rarely try to top out my bike anyways, so i figured i might as well go down one and be able to get to my top speed a little quicker, even though its not as fast of a top speed as before.

 

Hossheim,

Thanks for the info. I am not going to spend the money at the moment to get new springs front and aft, but I will crank up the proload a bit to at least stiffen things up for my body weight. Not the perfect solution, but a step in the right direction for now.

The_F4i_guy,

I am really considering getting the 520 conversion with 1 tooth down up front. Just to give a little more thrust but not sacrificing too much on top. So long as my top speed is at least 140mph(true speed), then I would not mind dropping 1 tooth.

Anyone ever have their F4i on a dyno with 1 tooth down up front and get a true top speed?