06. Suspension

Forks

The forks installed on these bikes are NOT up to standard, and a source of frequent discussion on the Ducati Forum. A lot of information can be found here.

I bought what was suppose to be brand new set of fully adjustable Showa forks off eBay, only to find that they were preload adjustable only.

After talking to a couple of suspension places, it became pretty clear that just buying a set of fully adjustable forks is not going to fix the problem. They need to be setup properly for your weight and the bike. The range of adjustment that you get in a fully adjustable set of forks is not enough to allow you to dial them in properly, even if you know what you are doing (which I don't).

After getting a partial refund, I decided to keep the forks, but had then rebuilt by Teknik Racing (in Sydney, Australia).

I am so pleased with the result !!!!!! After several weeks of riding, I do NOT feel any need to have compression and rebound damping adjustments to play with. These forks just work beautifully.

If I had plans to do track days or to race the bike, I would have gone the fully adjustable route. But for road riding, the forks work extremely well across the wide range of conditions you encounter on the road.

Rear Shocks

At this stage, there are no plans to upgrade the rear shocks, and I am currently working on trying to get them dialed in correctly.

The the shocks set at the default settings out of the factory, the bike has a real kick up the arse when even I hit any bumps in the road. At this point, I have softened the compression damping by 8 clicks, and no change to rebound, and while this is a lot better then is still a lot of room for improvement.