I recently installed Howard's at Motorcycle Metal , new 49mm triple trees , 49mm forks and 30mm fully adjustable fork cartridges. I want to give my review but first tell you a little about myself and how I got here. I'm a 55 year old male and raced motorcycles for Suzuki and later Yamaha up until my early 30's. All my race bikes had upgraded suspension but I never thought about it on a Harley . I bought my first Harley in 1986 and always accepted the ride for it just being a Harley. That changed for me about 4 or 5 years ago. I had an Electra Glide at the time and won a set of Progressive 940 shocks (they were just being released) , I bought the monotubes at the same time and had them installed. The bike was transformed , the ride was so much better than stock I wish I had upgraded my suspension sooner. In 2011 I bought a FLTRX. I knew I wanted to upgraded the suspension so I started reading on HDForums to see if there was anything better than the Progressive's. I read an article by Marc Parnes comparing Ricor to Ohlins and bought the Ricor shocks and Intiminators. I now believe this article to be a lie as I never could get the shocks to work , 1up they were ok , 2up terrible and worse than the Progressive 940's , the Intiminators were an improvement . Brian at Ricor re-valved them and tried to help me but it didn't work . At this point I called Howard after hearing about him on this forum , he was a wealth of knowledge and I ended up buying Ohlin's #3-#3 shocks from him and they were amazing. Later I removed the Intiminators up front and installed Progressive monotubes as I liked them better. I test rode a bike with Traxxion AK-20's and they seemed slightly better than the monotubes , but in my opinion not enough to justify the price difference. Later Howard started selling JRi shocks and I contacted Howard about them , he told me to save my money my Ohlin's were just as good , however I wanted a 12" shock with at least a 77mm stroke and a sweep valve and Ohlins didn't have one , JRi did , so I sold the Ohlin's and bought the JRi B 12" shocks. JRi compared to Ohlins are very similar in ride quality. I thought I was done until Howard contacted me about installing his front end system in my bike that he had been working on for 3 years. I thought long and hard before saying ok because this system on 2013 and older bikes is not cheap , you need triple trees , 2014 forks and 30mm cartridges , on 2014 models you just need the cartridges. I took my bike from Tampa to Miami (4 1/2 hours) to let Howard install his new system. What we thought would go easy took 17 weeks. I picked it back up 3/1/2014. Now 2K miles later I will say it is the single best improvement I've done to my bike . It did more for comfort and handling then the shocks did. The bike rides like it's on rails and corners so well but straight line comfort is amazing. I will hit something in the road and get zero vibration or feedback in my hands from my bars but only feel it in the *** end from my shocks. Going to Daytona this week 2 1/2 hours on the highway 2up loaded , my wife said it feels like we are floating the ride is so smooth. My final conclusion is I love it. PROS: smooth ride and handles great , nothing else compares CONS:you have to be willing to adjust it at first (set the sag , compression and rebound) , it's not just install and go , and cost - it is expensive but you can take it with you from bike to bike forever. Any questions and I'll try to answer them THANKS Tim

 

Tim,

Nice write up! Sounds like it was WELL worth the wait.

Have to ask, is this still a prototype and/or now in production, and of course what kind of $$$ are we talking about?

TIA,


YB

 

Howard is ready for production , email or call him for price and time as depending on your needs it will vary. I already had bought the 2014 fork lowers , uppers and tins at a discounted price from an online Harley dealer , so I only needed the triple trees and 30mm cartridges.

 

Great post Tim, I will follow this, I love my Ohlins.

 

How is the compression and rebound adjusted ? Does it require disassembly to adjust? Thanks for the review. I have been considering this since I read about you taking your bike to Howard.

 

look at my first picture and you will see the top of the forks , you put a allen wrench in the middle hole for compression/rebound adjustment , the bolt is for sag and done before assembly . Howard thought you could drill a small hole above the adjuster and put a rubber plug in it to allow you to adjust without disassembly , however on my bike my bars are so wide this would not be possible . I rode an adjusted it before reassembly and will now leave it alone.

 

Outstanding. Thanks. I will be contacting Howard soon.

 

Is this setup cheaper than going with the inverted fork setup? Does he still offer that?

 

I was seriously considering a 2014, but the prices are more than I want to give. So I am looking at doing a front end mod on the 09, but I don't want to go crazy. Howard's upgrade is likely the best out there, but is the price practical to the cost of trading the 09 in for a 14 and getting the handling improvements with added benefits of the Mount Rushmores? That is why I'm also comparing other fork upgrades. I will keep watching these reviews.

Thanks for the review.

Beary

 

Nice write up, but can you comment on the wobble? Is it gone or reduced at all? I have an 07 FLTR and is there any issue installing the speedo/tach housings over the larger triple trees? I remember Howard talking about fitment with these.