5 Steps to Transform Your Off-road Bike's Handling

Let's just dumb it down. First thought that comes to mind. Is your front end super stable to the point where it doesn't want to turn? Or is your front end sketchy and twitchy and you can't trust it at speed? Welcome back. It's good to see you've been putting the technique videos to use. I've noticed in the comments a lot of people are making progress, which is great. Today I'm going to show you how to properly set up your bike using only a screwdriver, an allen key and a t-bar. And these are all relevant to each bike. So some of these tools may change depending on what you actually ride. And the first most important part of getting started, getting your bike to fit you, is the handlebar position. You basically want your natural seated position when grabbing the bars to be as central as possible. And, you know, tall people end up at the back, little people end up close to the front. But where they get it wrong is they try and alleviate that by putting the bars into ridiculous positions. I've seen tall riders with handlebars rolled right forward, you know, little guys rolled right back. And, you know, there comes a point where it's whatever works for you. But look, hear me out and just go through these steps and see if we can sort everyone out. You want your mass as central as possible. So just get one foot up on the peg. Get comfortable so you don't have too much of a bent knee and you're not too straight being too far back. Just in the center, comfortable. When you reach out to the bars, you want to make sure you have slightly bent elbows. If your arms are straight, when you're sitting comfortably and you reach for the bars and they're dead straight, that's not a good thing. Similarly, if you reach for the bars and your arms are too bent, you're too far forward and you're putting too much bias to the front end of the bike. Ideally, you want to match that relaxed seated position, bent elbows, and have the handlebars with the taper. So the actual tapered part that angles upwards, you don't want that rolled forward. You don't want it rolled back. You want it to ideally run the angle of the forks. What that does, it gives you the perfect position for your hands and wrists. Do some of you get sore wrists from like a couple of hours riding and you're not even off-road? You're just riding down the street. That is because this angle's all wrong. And you're holding your wrist at an awkward angle, it might not seem like much. In this position of full control, let's call it, you want the angle of your arm and hand and wrist to be basically in the punch pose, you know? You want those impacts when they hit for your hand and forearm to be in the most ideal position to react and take the hits. Once you've secured that, lock it in. Just go with this, you know? Like, try it. You've got to try it. The big thing you need to understand about handlebar position and the effect that it has on the steering, the steering stability, is when the handlebars are rolled too far forward, you are bringing your point of leverage, which is the tip of the handlebar, you are bringing your point of leverage closer to the steering pivot. The closer that point of leverage is to the steering pivot, the steering stem, the less control you have on the handlebars. So if I've got my bars rolled forward and my hands are in line with the steering pivot, when that front wheel hits a rock or gets shunted, I'm copping all of it. There's no leverage. When they're rolled back into a relaxed position, you are now increasing the leverage over that steering pivot. So when the front wheel cops a hit from a rock or whatever, it's not an aggressive shunt. It's levered down by the distance between the steering pivot and the end of the handlebar. And similarly, you can actually increase that again by the bar clamp offsets. So the T7 has an offset bar clamp, so you can actually check that. Have a look where your bar clamp is. If it's in the forward hole or the offset is rotated forward, try moving it back. Let's just dumb it down. First thought that comes to mind. Is your front end super stable to the point where it doesn't want to turn? Or is your front end sketchy and twitchy and you can't trust it at speed? If it's sketchy and twitchy and you can't trust it at speed, start here, get your handlebars moving back. Okay? That's the first point. That's where we begin this. The next big one. Get your T-bar or your 10mm spanner, 12mm spanner, whatever it is. Have a look at where the top of your fork caps are in relation to the triple clamp. Okay? You can see that I've got at least 10mm sticking out the top there. That is about as far up as you want to go ever. I see people with ridiculous amounts of fork leg coming through the clamps and it's like... It can't be good at speed. Okay? Now, what happens when you lower the forks through the clamp is two things. You're actually extending the wheelbase, but what you're also affecting is not just the ride height of the front end, but the fork angle. If the fork's too far through the triple clamp, okay, you're lowering the front end, you're tightening the steering, and that's heavily exaggerated under brakes or when you chop the throttle. So if your bike feels good under power, but when you chop the throttle it's like a shopping trolley front wheel. You ever see a shopping trolley scooting through a car park and the wheels are just going flat out? Is that you? Is that your front wheel when you chop the throttle and you're just like, oh my god, tank's starting to pop? You don't need any special tools or jacks or anything. You can do this with your bike parked on the stand, okay, because there's two forks, right? One's going to hold up the other, so I am loosening off all four like that. You see that just relaxed and went through, don't freak out, the other one will hold it up. Okay, I've got that, I've dropped that fork cap pretty much flush with the triple clamp. T-bar by hand, that's heaps, that's heaps. Just as a little back up, if you're a bit paranoid about the tension on these, the very, very, very top one that actually clamps the cap around the threads, put a bit of beef into that one. You're not going to affect the action of the fork if that one's over tight, and for those who are just freaking out if they've got it tight enough, do the top one up super tight if you have to, but don't, but you can, but all the others, especially these two, they've got to be to a lot less torque than you think. So we've dropped the fork through now, and the effect that is going to have is raising the right height, raking out the fork angle, and giving a lot more stability at speed. It's going to be less inclined to duck and tuck and turn, like it once did, but it'll be a lot more stable, and with stability comes the confidence to turn, so even though you're raking it out, you'll probably find it's cornering so much better because you're confidently turning it the way it should. You find out the twitchiness, that's gone, stable as, you're, you know, feeling the transformation, but now you feel, oh, you've lost a bit of its ease of turning at low speed, you know, like single track or just turning around the car park or whatever. Now we move to the back. Just as the fork height can affect the angle of the fork by where it sits, so does the back. If the rear end of your bike is too squatted, watch the angle of the fork, what happens when the back is squatted, okay? So when there's not enough preload on the spring, it's going to rake the front out as well. If there's too much preload on the spring, it's going to stink bug, I think is the term, it's going to be jacked up in the back end and keep, no matter what you do to the front end, it's always going to still be twitchy, you don't have enough sag, static sag in the, in the back end. So just to check that, you know, like let's, let's not go into the realm of tape measures and millimeters, that's supercross, that's motocross, that's racing enduro, you guys don't need to be chasing that level. You just got to see by eye, like, oh, that's, there's not enough there. If you just put your eye on a point, be it there or the end of the indicator, tip of the exhaust, while it's just seated under its own weight and lift it. You want to, you know, use the tradesman's eye, you want to, you want to see that back end lift at least an inch. If it's, if it's lifting two inches or more, you need to wind some preload into the spring. If it doesn't lift at all, you need to back that spring right off. I've got this set up pretty firm because she's a heavy bike and I jump stuff, but you don't need to be going there. Does your, does your bike wallow through corners and, and you know, even if you're not drifting, you're just trying to turn through a decent corner, is it, is it, is it wallowing and rolling around? That's because there's too much sag. If there's not enough sag and it does the opposite, it just lights up and won't hold traction. It's because when there's no sag, the wheel can't drop into the changes in the terrain. So it's breaking traction. That sag, that ability for the rear wheel to drop away needs to be there for it to maintain drive. Even on a flat corner, if that rear end can't keep the wheel following the ground, you're just going to be lighting up everywhere, you know, like it's just a hassle to ride. It's hard to control. The beauty of adventure bikes, most modern ones to this level, is they have preload adjusters. So you can adjust the spring preload in the shock with no tools. Just the dial. T7's got one. I don't know what other bikes have got them, but most probably have them. Okay. You can actually wind preload into the spring and alter the static sag and the rider sag. Just focus on the static sag, just to simplify it. Just keep an eye. Remember what I said about the inch of play at the back? Now I want to show you how people get the luggage thing so wrong. Been out riding, oh, it handles so good. Can't wait for the camping trip with the boys. So they put their bags on, they fill it with 15, 20 kilos of stuff on the back, load it up and completely undo all the handling changes they've made. You see squatting the rear, what's happening now? It's changed the fork angle up front. It's going to wallow at the back because there's too much static sag, too much rider sag as well, but too much static sag. So if you do nothing else, please do this. Get your preload adjuster and wind the hell out of it. Wind it in. You want to boost that spring up. And what you want to do, the goal is to wind that all the way in until with all the luggage on there, you return that static sag to one inch. If putting all your luggage in has changed the static sag from an inch to two or three inches, you wind that preload adjuster all the way in until that spring comes up and the bike naturally sits with one inch of free play, one inch of static sag with all the luggage on it. If you cannot achieve that one inch of static sag on the back with all the luggage on, you've got to change the spring. It's too soft. Your bike's never going to handle good with that luggage on it, with that spring in it, and with you on it. You've got your front end right, you've taken the twitchiness out of it, you're happy with the way it's cornering, you're happy with its stability at speed, but if anything, you'd just like to take the edge off it. It's feeling a little harsh. So find your compression clicker. I'm not going to say what it is on the T7 because every bike's different, okay? So just ascertain if your compression clickers are at the top or bottom based on whatever bike you're riding. If you'd just like to take the edge off those hits a bit, back off the compression clickers, okay? If you feel that it's a super cushy couch and you'd like it to take the hits a bit better, more so the G-outs, you know, when you go through creek beds or whatever, wind it in. Do two or three at a time. Take a screwdriver with you. Take this stuff with you on your ride. You can do all these changes out in the bush on your circuit and you can immediately feel the results of your changes. Now, this is really important. If after you've made the fork height changes, you've got the handlebar in a better position and you've done all the things that should have stabilized the front end and give you more control, but it still feels nervous and sketchy and untrustworthy, then chances are your rebound is too slow, okay? So rebound is not hard soft. Rebound is fast or slow and what's happening there is as it compresses or hits a bump or under brakes it gets low, the fork can pack up, keep the front end down, exaggerating the shopping trolley wheel twitchiness and also in not being able to keep those knobs constantly following the ground, it's a very vague front end. It's loose. It just can't keep traction. That's your bike all over. You need to speed up the rebound. You need that wheel to react quicker and follow the surfaces of the ground immediately. So that's how compression and rebound can fine tune your chassis changes, okay? So your fork height and your static sag are chassis changes. Suspension action changes complement that. You should always get the chassis set up right and then fine tune it with your action, okay? Get your comfortable body position. Get the bike balanced and riding properly and then as you start to push that, break it down. Okay, yeah, front end's still pushing a bit. It's still a bit tucky. It's still tucky with all these changes, okay? Maybe speed up the rebound. Yeah, that's better. I can trust it. It doesn't feel like the front end's going to wash out on me. And same with the rear. If you just won't hold that slide, speed up the rebound a touch, but it just depends also what kind of stuff you're riding. The difference between sand and gravel roads is polar opposite almost, so you kind of want to find that compromise and then use your body position to adjust in these situations. So, look, that's probably enough to fill your mind with for now, so we won't go into too much more detail on that. I think you've got enough there. Take the screwdriver, take the T-bar, the Allen key, put it in your pack and on your next loop and ride somewhere that you know very well. The secret is to go to a track or a trail that you know inside out, okay? You know what your bike should be doing. So when you make these changes and you come through that corner, you'll be like, no way, I've never nailed that so good. Or you'll be like, oh no, that's garbage, I should have, I did that heaps easier yesterday, I'm going the wrong way. That will help you understand if the changes you've made are moving in the right direction. Go for a ride that you're familiar with and familiar with how the bike reacts in those conditions and those circumstances and honestly, with what I've shown you on those few basic changes, you don't need a mechanic, you don't need to pay anyone. You just go and start to understand what it is that you're riding. Use the facilities on the bike. It's all there for you to customize to yourself and once you understand it, no one can set your bike up better than you can once you understand it. Sort yourself out and your confidence will just go up in all aspects. Confidence to travel, confidence to ride in more challenging conditions and terrain and you just, yeah, you'll form a stronger partnership with your bike. Subscribe, all that business, yeah, there's more to come.