BMW G 650 Xmoto, Tweaking the Suspension
I decided to look into the problem of the BMW G 650 Xmoto front suspension. The issue is that the front suspension on the BMW G650 Xmoto is setup to soft, this happened after some major repairs on the front forks, that it dives to fast under braking, then bounces back up when accelerating. Making riding the BMW G 650 Xmoto unpredictable and sometimes even dangerous.Tweaking the suspension is a bit of a dark art, and whenever I try to tweak my suspension settings, I usually reverting back to standard, as I've managed to mess it up. So I invited some motorcycle mechanics for a BBQ party and they where helpful to assist me with my suspension setup.
We did tweaked the compression on max. The rebound, which is on the right fork leg only, we set at four clicks out and the front was marginally firmer and less sloppy as a result. Apparently, thicker fork oil is probably the way forward here, as the springs themselves seem to be doing a decent enough job. That may be something I'll look into next time.
The rear shock made an instant difference with each turn, and you could see the weight shift. We halved the static sag from 20mm to 10mm, and settled on a rebound damping setting of eight clicks from fully in, instead of the original 12. The BMW G650 Xmoto certainly feels more tightly for it.In fact, at the first traffic I meet the rear lifts off the road with no effort. This is getting interesting. As far as getting the front up goes, one friend's tip was to get to 25km/h in first gear and open the throttle fully. And it works, too. Certainly no verticals, but I'm popping little wheelies everywhere now, and getting used to the front being off the ground. I reckon I could finally be onto something here...
