A few questions for you all on this topic.

1) what's the official term for this?
2) why does the front end dip soooo much when breaking? I do notice it more at lower speeds.
3) i under stand that the natural suspension needs to move at the forks, but what can be done to reduce this dose dive when breaking?

Likely this is just another standard mod most will do, and that most are used to Harley's doing this. I'm interested in thoughts on how to minimize this.

Thanks all.

 

Change out you fork oil for the SE fork oil, will help a lot

 

Yuuup, mine did the same until I changed the fork oil to SE. Not a hard job at all!

 

+1 on changing to SE fork oil.

 

Change your braking habits. Layoff the front brake at low speeds, that's a recipe for disaster.

 

1. Dive

2. Because the center of gravity shifts forward when you brake, putting more weight on the front wheel, and forks.

3. Heavier fork oil...... or update the 1950's style front suspension with a cartridge system.

 

It's called brake dive.

Mainly caused by equipping bikes made in the 21st century, with a fork/suspension design from the 1950's. That the MoCo continues this practice on $20k+ bikes, is pathetic IMO.

Jeff

 

I agree with KCFLHRC. Have seen more guys go down beause of this than anything else. @ smokindave, nice bike but the Nova..........WOW.

 

Another happy rider who just changed to heavier fork oil. Didn't make as much of a difference as I thought but it was $90 well spent. Wonder why they don't put thicker stuff in from the factory?

 

Harleys used to have an anti-dive design for the front end. It used air pressure in the engine guard or the handlebars (depending on year) and a small electrically operated valve. During normal suspension movement the air pressure assisted the fork springs. When you touched the front brake the small electric valve closed. The smaller volume of air that remained in the forks didn't have any place to go so it provided additional springing force compared to when the little valve was open.

I think Erik Buell designed the system back in the 1980's. I don't know why Harley got rid of it. My EVO era touring bikes had less front end dive under braking.