I am from Canada and on a recent trip to the US I contacted Howard about Ohlins shocks for my 2005 Ultra. Howard was more than helpful in determining the 'best for me' shock and very friendly to talk to on the phone. I ordered shocks and had expected to have to had them shipped to Canada ( and pay duty and taxes ) but with his quick turn around he was able to have them shipped UPS to my hotel saving me about $200. I highly recommend anyone considering shocks to call Howard. Now if these East Coast storms would only stop I could get home. Why does the US send the **** weather to Canada along the Eastern Seaboard?

 

Howard knows his stuff about shocks for sure.

 

enjoy the ride , you will notice a big difference

 

Tj316...did Howard ever finish your front end? I'm anxious to hear your review of his new setup

 

don't remind me , Sunday will be 14 weeks , but it is close now , Howard calls me every few days with an update , I dropped it off 11/3/2013 , we felt his prototype at that point was close enough with a few mods it would be done in a short time , everything is being done on a CNC machine so he has a computer program to duplicate it when he goes into full production , but between the CNC machine breaking down a few times , the machine shop shutting down Christmas to New Years and them being extremely busy with their regular customers that pay their everyday bills this thing has dragged on longer than we all thought , Howard is not happy , I'm not happy but we are to far into it to stop now , I'm guessing another week or 2 , I will give an honest review when done and I ride it but man I miss my bike TJ

 

An open letter to those who wish to know or what I did over the summer.

I have been working on TJ’s bike for many days now. I have been designing his cartridges to work well for his application. Tim is a bit short in the inseam so I had to lower his bike about ˝” in the front end (internally). He has JRI B 12” on the rear that sit @ about 11” when he sitting on the bike (in the rear). To match his rear sag I measured the OEM fork stroke with the top out spring collapsed (to bottom out) hard (metal against metal) to be 4.414”/112.156mm. The OEM fork length from bottom of bottom triple tree to Ç of axle (full top bottom out) is 392mm/15.433”. OEM top out spring is 0.959” & collapses fully to 0.625” that is a spring stroke of 0.334”. Including the rider's rider’s sag (R-3) add the top out spring travel to figure out full stroke. This means the full fork travel/length from full extension to bottom out. That top out spring is very powerful and only protects the damper piston for damage upon top out.

MY theory has been from the very beginning when starting quality Harley suspension is to divide up the stroke into two segments. This requires great equipment which, at that time, were only two shock companies, Penske & Öhlins (selling in the USA). I needed suspension for my own bike and know no one was making anything I would ever spend money on, I needed to develop my own or go without.

This is the first total real fork system for a 1986~current FLT. I first investigated the **** poor top triple tree connection. I welded 2 circle milled “donuts” onto a stock FLT triple tree and the results were immediately noticed. I reported my results right here on this site several years ago. I had moved on from Penske to developing all Öhlins products for Harley Davidsons. This was at a time almost all here saw no need for any suspension improvements. I took a road trip up to ÖhlinsUSA to develop a 25mm cartridge system in a 41mm fork. By the time I made fork caps, had custom, larger I.D. 41mm fork tubes made to fit through the new top tree, smaller custom OD springs made for the new cartridges, I realized I was just putting a band aid on something that should have be amputated. The 41mm fork is heavy & flexes like wet pasta. Kind of like pissing in the wind!

I started putting in 30mm cartridges in 49mm Dynas, they were so much better than the 20mm cartridges I was making and the Traxxion AK-20’s I was hired to install in other persons bikes. I knew right than and there that nothing less than large cartridges would work for my purposes (FLT's).

My plan was to install 49mm forks in my own triple trees that replicate the same rake, trail, & mounting for all FLT’s using V-Rod sliders. I have been doing far superior handling inverted forks with 26ş rake & 4” of trail on FLT's, but was not popular because people do not wish to deviate from stock looking poor handling HD stuff. My goal is to have an absolute ridged connection, dumping the dome nut under the top tree and replacing it with a double bolt clamp, a PH 7 Stainless Steel bottom rigid triple tree that will not flex, and 49mm forks.

I set TJ’s stroke the same way as I do my shocks. These cartridges are made quite a bit better , I can adjust the length and value of the top out spring as well as utalizing a rubber bump stop just like my shocks for top and bottom out protection, unlike HD’s. While TJ sits ˝” lower than HD’s, the bottom out is exactly at the same distance from the bottom of the bottom triple tree. I manipulated the top side (rebound) of the stroke to be much longer than the 1/3rd of an inch HD has (top out spring) and I made the spring less value and included a rubber bump stop under the piston. This will give a very plush ride at the top end. TJ’s stroke is now a total of 5.231”/132.89mm (0.817"longer than OEM) but the incresed is only noticed when the front wheel goes into a hole and you, your frame, and your wife does not. The front wheel stays in contact with the road.

Because these forks are externally adjustable: compression, rebound, & spring pre-load, you can control how your bike will perform/ride determined by your mood and the road conditions. Cruse long distance: adjust the spring pre-load to 45mm of sag, than adjust the compression & rebound to suite. Want to run spirited? Change the sag to 35mm than adjust the compression & rebound to suite.

I have some Dyno graphs that TJ will have to memorize; this graph is shown in the amount of “clicks” from closed.

It is around 10pm, Saturday night and I am going back and assembling TJ’s forks. I have been using my own fork shells for development up to this point because TJ wanted chrome (scratch). I started at 5am this am and was on the internet (e-Mail) with one of my shock customers until midnight last night.


TJ's bike looks stock and you can not tell the difference, everything bolts up.



What it looks like under the nacelle.



Compression Dyno Sheet

Rebound Dyno Sheet

Anyhow, it takes a lot of time to do this job since no one else in the world has ever done it on a bagger. This a whole lot harder to do and get it to work. I have over 3 years and well over $20,000 invested before the first fork package is ever sold...

My attitude is there is two classes of products, first class and junk.

 

Looking forward to the finished product and ride test. Road trip to Florida hopefully this fall to have my bike done !!

 

Thanks for clearing that up Howard. I was wondering why I haven't heard from Tim. BTW I'm loving the JRIs.

 

Good report Howard. Get some damn sleep.