Steering Damper

The tiny nature of the bike makes it very agile and rawness, but there is an occasional head-shake tendency. This depends on rider style plus road conditions. The workaround is to add a steering damper. The most common ones were those mounted from the left engine to the fork. I didn’t like that style as that affected the aesthetic of the bike.

I was considering the Scotts Damper but this means it will need to cover the beautiful triples on the R, if I do manage to make it work. My solution was to use a center mount, but at the bottom of the triples. To get this to work, I got the Ohlins SD008 blackline damper. Having no prior experience, took a gamble with 68mm stroke hoping it will work.

Just above the radiator on the frame there is thickened mount point with 2 threads for 6mm bolts. Not sure if they are there for any oem accessory, but I figured this may may work for a damper mount. My solution to the mount was to make it 2 piece. NOTE: ABS setup lines in the way. In my case, it was already bypassed. Refer to ABS Bypass.

I had hand drawn images to scale and had a local CNC workshop to mill the base mount. It widens the mount base for the next piece.

This mount works better without the OEM ABS lines. Not sure if it can work with ABS lines sill in place and adjusted. I tried to use titanium bolts but did not have all the correct length and had to resort to SS here and there.

This is the 2nd piece. Again hand drawn and CNC milled. It screws on to the upper piece.

8mm threads to match damper mount. The squarish base does not work with the damper. I will make this circular in a future upgrade.

The white ring is a Teflon collar made for ZX10 2006 damper mount. This allows the damper to sit upright with reduced friction. The metal collar sits in the teflon ring where the M8 bolt goes thru. The upper black colored bush was required to sit into the damper mount correctly. If I do this mod again, I will have the triangle piece finished with circular base.

Note: The teflon collar had to be trimmed to a tear drop shape to sit into the damper mount.

End product. Everything set perfectly with some adjustments. 55mm fork clamps are not common. I bought a cheap 54mm clamp and had it machined to 55mm. Ohlins make a nicer clamp but requires the removal of the fork for installation.

The knob being on the left is perfect as its easy to reach out to adjust on the fly. Also, while at stops, you can easily see the damper which gives a silly visual happiness considering its my custom made mount.