“I had nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
What do you do when you drop 30 K on an incredible looking trike but it handles like an over caffeinated college student maxed out on Adderall? That is the question that was posed to me by my good friend Bruce Seigal.
To be honest, he did not use those exact words. He said he has a beautiful looking trike but he doesn’t enjoy riding it because it handles so poorly. Bruce was experiencing a jittery front end at neighborhood speeds and there was no confidence to corner with any serious speed. Now, this is not my area of expertise. As I think about it now, I’m not sure if I have an area of expertise. Anyway, at the time I probably knew more about Japanese water gardens than I did trike suspensions and I am not even sure Japanese water gardens are a thing. Are Japanese water gardens a thing? They have coy fish, right? Arrrgg… that is not the point. I am distracted again. I probably need Adderall.
Anyway, it was a question that I posed to Mike Alex from Suspension Technologies (SuspensionTechnologies.com). Suspension Technologies is one of the top, if not the #1, industry go-tos for difficult suspension questions. Mike started out as a suspension engineer for Chrysler and GM many moons ago and he eventually ended up on the Bonneville salt flats with both companies engineering suspension solutions for teams breaking word speed records. He is a long time Harley rider that kept answering suspension questions until it became evident that he might as well have his own company. He teamed up with Noah Jacobson of Elite Machining to establish a new home for Suspension Technologies and the rest is history.
I asked Mike about the trike and he responded with an interesting offer. “Edge, we are only 7 hours from you. Why don’t you just give us a visit?” I answered “yes” immediately.
A couple weeks later I was the kid in the candy store touring the Suspension Technologies facility. Everything these guys do is USA made and resourced. Most of the process is “in house.” The company has invested millions in machinery in order to produce suspension products to exact tolerances.
I also got a first-hand look at what goes into a shock. One thing that impressed me is that there are 26-30 parts that are assembled by hand. A good number of the parts looked identical to me because my eyes can’t distinguish between washers that may only have a thousandth of an inch difference. The really interesting thing is that switch any part and it will greatly (and negatively) affects how the shock works.
I bought a new set of shocks from one of the biggest names in the industry a while back and I was disappointed. After some serious testing on the road I had to admit to myself that the stock HD shocks that I had replaced, actually handled better than the new shocks I shelled out big bucks to get. This was unbelievable to me. Stock HD shocks can be pretty horrible. “Better than stock,” is a pretty low bar.
I saw the XYZ factory rep later in Daytona and they gave me an exchange with another set. This time the handling was better than stock. The handling was OK however, for the money I shelled out, my world wasn’t set on fire. Anyway, what I realized in this tour is that quite possibly just one of those many parts could have been installed out of order which caused the poor performance. It seems to me like this would be really easy to do.
I asked Mike Alex about this and he said the only way to catch this before the shock goes out to a customer is to use a shock dynamometer. The only way to do this right is to individually test each shock. This is an arduous and therefore expensive process. Ohlin and JRI do this. The high volume, overseas manufactures that I had been giving my money to through the years do not.
Suspension Technologies tests every shock and then the shocks are matched, which is also a big deal. Their shocks are sold in matched sets. They start with cutting edge engineering, materials and processes so that when they are finished; so they have a lifetime warranty, no questions asked. The tour answered my questions about how things that essentially looked the same (to me) could perform so differently. I was a lil’ bit awestruck and I stuck around for a bit and I was able to see the process. Incredible.
Back to the problematic trike. Most of what they do is for bikes but they also deal with trikes and they even manufacture their own trike conversion kit. Mike and Noah each rode the problematic trike and made their observations independent of one another. They don’t talk until they have made their notes independent of each other. It’s a simple idea but it’s pretty smart.
They were both OK with the front forks. Suspension Technologies manufactures a killer fork cartridge replacement kit but both testers thought it wasn’t necessary in this case. They did indicate the need for a front stabilizer (which they don’t make) and steered me to one of their competitors for that. Classy engineers.
The big culprit was the air ride rear suspension. Despite the insanely high price tag on what we took off the trike, they showed me how the “sweet spot” on the air shocks was pretty small. It wasn’t possible to even dial in the sweet spot in this particular case.
After installing the new rear suspension, the trike was instantly more manageable. The crew took turns riding the trike and then comparing notes as the shocks were fine-tuned. Science came full circle to art as the gurus compared notes.
Notes about tuning the suspension from Mike:
First, no spanner tool or any special tool needed to adjust the shock.
If you feel bounce a simple adjustment to the rebound will most likely fix the issue. Soften the preload. Also, with some of our products you can adjust the rebound with the bleed adjuster.
We do advise you take the pressure off the rear of the bike when installing the shocks. It just makes it so much easier. And yes on some bikes you may need to raise or lower the bike to get both sides on, depending on swing arm tolerances.
Now the trike handles like a dream. I don’t think Adderall was a thing when these guys went through engineering school but they got it right. These guys know suspensions.
–Edge
