Ricor INTIMINATOR front fork inserts

[YEN_POWELL]

http://store.ricorshocks.com/
I received the shock inserts, securely packaged in a block of foam and with easy to understand fitting instructions. I removed the front wheel and forks myself, but left the fitting of the inserts to Steve at Silverex Engineering in Braintree, the same man who did such a great job stripping my engine and fitting a new output shaft bearing 38,000 miles ago. I remembered to loosen the fork caps, after first loosening the top yoke clamps, but with the forks still held securely by the bottom yoke, in order to make removing them later easier for Steve.

I handed over the forks to Silverex, returning to collect them later on that day. Steve had removed the top cap, drained out the old oil and removed both the upper and lower springs. The intiminators were pushed down inside the fork, and then 5W fork oil was filled up to the standard level given in the workshop manual. The original Honda springs were refitted and the caps screwed back on. They charged £30 to fit them. I would’ve attempted it myself, but I remembered the times I have spent trying to get the same oil level in each fork on previous occasions because I’m too tight to buy a syringe type fork oil filler and decide to leave it to the experts.

I collected the forks and took them home to refit. Off the bike, they felt quite softly sprung whilst pushing them up and down on the garage floor. I refitted the forks, then the front wheel. I took the bike off the workshop stand and squeezed the brake lever a few times to get the front brake callipers to close up on the discs. I did a few experimental pushes of the bike to gauge the fork dive and they now felt surprisingly stiff with a lot less dive than previously.

I went and got my jacket and helmet and rode a few circuits of the estate where I live. The forks felt very plush when passing over manhole covers and ripples in the road surface, yet stiffer when braking at junctions. A speed table near my house has ramps edged with granite kerbs which stand proud of the adjacent asphalt. Previously when I rode over this it used to jar my hands through the handlebars (it makes a hell of a jolt when I drive my car over it too). With the intiminators fitted it was like riding a hovercraft over the ramp, no jarring through the bars at all.

Next morning I rode the bike to work, a 100 mile round trip along a dual carriageway and then the M11 south to London, a large 3rd world city if the state of it’s roads are anything to go by. I have been doing this trip on Africa Twins nearly every working day since 1997. That’s about 250,000 miles on the same route. I know every bump, dip and pothole intimately and I intended to try and ride over most of them.

At 80mph on the dual carriageway and motorway the forks seemed to be very relaxed, shrugging off any cats eyes caught when changing lanes. A particularly evil lump in the fast lane of the M11 just after the Harlow exit normally makes the bike leap about a bit. This time I just seemed to float over it. I went up to a 100mph a few times purely for research purposes and the bike seemed less skittish than other times, although that may be because it was a relatively calm day wind wise. Braking caused less dive than previously, something that I will appreciate when riding on unlit roads at night, as my headlights will now hopefully light up the road ahead rather than pointing downward temporarily. When I got to east London I searched out every crappy road surface I could (plenty of choice), the difference was pretty dramatic.

After I finished work I headed back out of east London. There was a big problem with traffic and I had to filter between slow moving cars for about 12 miles. Normally I move from side to side to avoid riding over the cats eyes which set up an annoying hammering if ridden over for any length of time. This time I aimed for them to compare the difference. The forks were handling them brilliantly, my rear shock wasn’t, it’s age and condition really shown up by the new life given to the forks.

Instead of carrying on up the motorway I left it at the Harlow exit and headed across country. This route is one I take on sunny days when I’ve had enough of boring motorways and crowded roads. It’s about 30 miles of narrow winding and occasionally fast roads which I usually have to myself (barring the odd tractor or deer). It also has some of the bumpiest stretches I regularly ride over. On my old RD04 I used to stop as soon as I got off the motorway and let the air out of the forks to soften them prior the hammering I was about to get. It started piddling down as I left the motorway so I stopped to put my waterproofs on.


By the time I set off again the lumps and bumps in the road were showing up by the standing water in them. I was able to ride most of the route at a quicker pace than usual, as the bike wasn’t jumping about so much on the bad sections. Despite the rain I started to enjoy the ride, something that doesn’t happen often when you commute in all weathers.


I have to say the forks are now really good on my bike, despite still having the original fork seals (ya gotta love fork gaiters) and springs which have done 86,000 miles already. As I said earlier, it has made me want to replace the rear shock, as anything the forks shrug off just gets me when the rear wheel goes over it.





The good news for Africa Twin owners is that Ricor are offering the same 50% discount as they were to Transalp owners. That means they are available for $149. Just type the code 'xrv.org' when ordering on their website.
http://store.ricorshocks.com/

[Bonzo]

Tried typing in the code. Code no workie. Code expired.
E-mailed richor to say I wanted a pair at the discount price in Sept but after 6 weeks, still no reply. Not good enuf is it.
Perhaps the guys on here have ordered enuf for them to charge full price.

[YEN_POWELL]

Tried typing in the code. Code no workie. Code expired.
E-mailed richor to say I wanted a pair at the discount price in Sept but after 6 weeks, still no reply. Not good enuf is it.
Perhaps the guys on here have ordered enuf for them to charge full price.

Hi Bonzo,

One of the other moderators tried entering the code after reading your post and says it worked for him. Have another go and see what happens.

Yen

[Bonzo]

Hi and thanks for the rapid reply. Have tried a few times over the last few weeks when I wasn't getting a reply from ricor but I got no joy as it was giving me the full price of 298 bucks or thereabouts.

Are you completely happy with yours and do you notice a difference off road, if you do that sort of thing. If not has anyone else some experience of them off road on an AT in the UK. Think I've seen something on ADVrider from a guy in Aus but with mixed results and homemade modifications which suggests they arn't quite right yet.

[YEN_POWELL]

Hi and thanks for the rapid reply. Have tried a few times over the last few weeks when I wasn't getting a reply from ricor but I got no joy as it was giving me the full price of 298 bucks or thereabouts.

Are you completely happy with yours and do you notice a difference off road, if you do that sort of thing. If not has anyone else some experience of them off road on an AT in the UK. Think I've seen something on ADVrider from a guy in Aus but with mixed results and homemade modifications which suggests they arn't quite right yet.

I'm still really pleased with mine, the bike definitely tracks better at motorway speeds which is most of my journey when commuting. Done about 4,000 miles on them so far.

I've done a few unsurfaced tracks but only in the dry, dry mud ruts, grass, gravel etc, when out and about and there is an improvement. My rear shock is now really shown up by the front end, age and mileage of course. I will be fitting a lower mileage standard shock whilst I wait to see what Ricor produce for ATs.

[Bonzo]

Tried the link and it works now. Appears to be a different page layout. Shipping costs ($36) appear high for such a small package.

I guess I'm lucky with my @ as it only has 13k miles and the fork oil was changed 3 years ago. Rear shock is ok. It handles well on the dirty stuff and so much better than my 1200GS, whch is surprising when @ technology is from the mid 90's. I can place the @ where I want it and the power delivery is smoooooth.

[Underground]

I just used that code , works good , and that freight sure is expensive
cant wait for them to turn up now .
On an RD03 do you cut the springs down at all to compensate for the thickness of the intiminators ?
And do you need to run any air pressure or is that not necessary now?

[TJE]

Just ordered a pair ... waiting for the rear shock to surface, and I definitely get one of those, as my standard rear is old and tired, me think.

[bikerfromsark]

Hi all, My name is George Guille I am just back in the UK after 13months on my RD07A Riding from here in the Channel Islands down to Australia, almost exactly 30'000miles. About 6 or 7 months ago I contacted Don Richardson at RICOR with regards their new Intiminator fork valves for the Africa Twin and their rear shock that they are currently developing. As a result of that I happily agreed to fit my bike with their fork valves as a long term test. Don sent me two sets with different tunes, one soft and one firm as well as a set of shims so I could fine tune them for me.

One thing I have found on the Africa Twin which is only heighted when the bike is used as an overlander and loaded up with 50kg of gear, is that the front end will dive so much that it will totally upset the running of the bike when riding, particularly if you are starting to push it a bit, say in the Alps for example.

Before I left I tried to get around this by fitting progressive springs from White Power. They helped a lot but I was still not happy. Once in Switzerland I removed the White Power supplied preload spacers (15mm) and had a new set of alloy preload spacers made up this time 45mm. At last the bike would handle properly! Giving the GSXR's a run for their money up the grimzel pass fully loaded and a set of tyres on the back proved that.

Fast forward a couple of thousand km’s and now in Pakistan when the roads start to get a bit more bumpy, pot holes all over the place and the Karakorum highway is being dug up by the Chinese and in terrible condition. Here my front forks are now too stiff to soak up the impacts. I tell myself that this is just something I have to live with, a compromise for the improved road handling and watch my brother disappearing off into the distance on his KTM 640adv.

With everything agreed Don sent out the two different tunes to Bangkok in Thailand. Due to most of the roads in South East Asia being sealed I decided to fit the firmer tune Intiminators first. As you see from the instructions the installation of the fork valves really couldn’t be simpler. Remove the wheel with the bike on the main stand, drop out the forks from the triple clamps. Remove the cap on top of the forks and remove the springs and pour out the old fork oil. I flushed the forks a few times with a cleaner then refilled with 5W fork oil and reinstalled the springs and put it all back together easily all done in under an hour.
Excited to give them a test I took the bike straight out for a ride. To my amazement due to the way that they work my forks were FIRMER than with the progressive springs and 3x the normal preload spacers! Riding back into Bangkok I made an effort to hit any lip, bump or ruff surface. The result is a little odd at first...I could hardly feel them!
Down in Malaysia I took a couple days off roading still with my luggage and the front end was handling it just amazing, so much better than with my previous arrangement.
So as a result of installing the Intiminators I had an even firmer front end that was also much softer and able to soak up much larger impacts than before!

After 2 months with the firmer tune Intiminator in the bike when in Kuala Lumpur I fitted the softer tune Intiminator that Don had sent me. My next country was going to be Indonesia, worse roads and worse drivers...lots of emergency braking! I was also eager to leave the main sealed roads and explore some of the last jungle and wilderness in the world.
The softer tune was a big difference at first I didn’t like it, like it had been before without the Intiminators. However as soon as I stated to hit the rougher roads and pot holes I just couldn’t believe how much the front end was soaking up. It was starting to get silly when I began to purposely aim for the largest pot hole I could find just so I could watch how fast the forks react!
Riding along side the KTM640 was a great comparison, that bike has great suspension, what you would normally consider call far superior than the Africa Twin stock suspension. Now an odd things happened I started to leave the 640 behind! The rougher it got the better the inertia valves worked and the more I would leave the 640 behind.

In conclusion I am going to keep the Intiminator in the bike as I carry on around the world via South America, North America, Russia, East and West Africa until I get back to Europe.

If I had known of the RICOR Intiminators when doing the preparation of my bike, I would have without question spent my money on the Intiminator instead of the progressive springs. (The Intiminator are designed to and do work best with the stock springs)
Why try and sort out the front suspension by spending money on new fork springs and not really get it right, instead I fully recommend to spend the extra on a set of Intiminators, you will not regret it.

I rate the 3 best things I have done for my bike to be my custom made seat, big windscreen and the RICOR Intiminator fork valves.

I can't wait for their rear shock to become avliable as I will be next modification I do to the bike.

I hope this has been of help

George

[TJE]

Wow, sounds like you were on a fantastic trip, George!!!!

30,000 miles sound absolutely mindblowing ... Do you have trip journal somewhere on the web? Would love to read about it, especially since I live in SE asia ...

Still waiting for the intiminators to arrive ... can't wait to get them on the bike and try them out.

/T