young lads have no idea how good today’s bikes
are. At the ISDE in Wales my hands were completely
numb for the first 40 minutes each morning
after day one. That Husky WR430 sure shook,
and most days were eight hours plus of riding.
The up-shot of all this was I needed to learn about
suspension valving. I had already tried just buying
harder springs, but that gave very little satisfaction.
Fortunately though, through my racing I got to
know the grand old master of NZ suspension,
Tjebbe Bruin. Tjebbe showed me how a shock
worked and how to re-valve one (thanks mate!).
After that I went to NZIG, got a nitrogen bottle,
some shock oil and went to work on my own bikes.
Now, to start with I reckon the ratio of
valving changes to success was about 10
to 1. Ten were worse, one was better.
However, eventually I learnt and got an
understanding of what actually worked – what
more or less high/low speed shims actually did
to the ride feel. Did nitrogen psi make much
difference etc? The thing that taught me more than
anything was that every time I re-valved my bike,
I rode it – so the feedback I got was first hand.
When I got a new bike, I would ride it and decide
what I didn’t like. Then I would get stuck in and
re-valve it several times a day, if necessary, until
I was happy. I was very fortunate to have a farm
and an excellent testing ground right beside
my workshop. As mentioned, sometimes I made
progress and sometimes I didn’t – so don’t be
too critical of your suspension tuner – it is an
inexact science. Having said that, if you give
accurate information to your suspension guy,
he should be able to give you an improvement.
Basically the more informed you can be, the better
the information you can give your suspension
man, the better your results are likely to be.
So, with all this floating around in the back of my
mind, I wanted to ask the best of the best how
they liked their suspension, and the results are
fascinating! Two world champions and a runner
up can’t be wrong, but they can certainly be
different. Here are the questions I
asked them and their answers.
Read on to see how
NZ’s most successful
riders liked their suspension.
46 KIWI RIDER
Learn how your suspsension
works by adjusting the click-
ers one at a time, then go for
a ride. Then adjust it some
more and go for another ride.
When you’ve figured out what
that clicker does... it’s time to
move on to the next one