Jeremy Wilkey
Owner, MX-Tech
- Jan 28, 2000
- 1,453
- 0
Chad Newton called the day right after the Yam dealer show and asked about the new twin piston KYB fork. I was like what? I have unfortunatley not seen a picture? We talked about what it might be doing in the fork. I had only a few quick ideas.
A while back I was buildinhg a Drag bike that had a older pair of Honda Road bike forks. The Cartridge had a "twin piston" It was basically a check valve and a clicker circuit yet it did make the gears turn.
Using a very simple design change the basevalve has a machined valve groove that has a shim stack sealing it's groove. So at low fork speeds the bleed circuit works in direct opostion to the clicker. This is a very good idea in some ways as the clicker now has a varibale orfice and can be run farther out yet not give up lowspeed control. The major problem is that the suspension loses responce at low speeds and basicaly the rider loses traction.
With a second piston in the fork they could do more with this shim stack. They could enlarge the total area of the clicker orfice and use a better piston design. Now the clciker could offer a wider range of speed adjustments, still offer a small low speed bleed and deliver a great ride. I don't know what will actually happen, this is my best speculation looking at current designs.
One last thing to consider.. suspension inovations are chronically either over or under employed durring first model releases.
Regards,
Jer
A while back I was buildinhg a Drag bike that had a older pair of Honda Road bike forks. The Cartridge had a "twin piston" It was basically a check valve and a clicker circuit yet it did make the gears turn.
Using a very simple design change the basevalve has a machined valve groove that has a shim stack sealing it's groove. So at low fork speeds the bleed circuit works in direct opostion to the clicker. This is a very good idea in some ways as the clicker now has a varibale orfice and can be run farther out yet not give up lowspeed control. The major problem is that the suspension loses responce at low speeds and basicaly the rider loses traction.
With a second piston in the fork they could do more with this shim stack. They could enlarge the total area of the clicker orfice and use a better piston design. Now the clciker could offer a wider range of speed adjustments, still offer a small low speed bleed and deliver a great ride. I don't know what will actually happen, this is my best speculation looking at current designs.
One last thing to consider.. suspension inovations are chronically either over or under employed durring first model releases.
Regards,
Jer
