New Bike

["Tom Brown" <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ben:

>Earles forks qualify on 1200s or fantasy bike?

>Try as I might ot to stuck in the olden tymes, I can't shake the idea that
the Earles forks design is still pretty good, at least if it was made with
lightweight modern materials.

Still too heavy.  It is a good design.  It was designed for use on sidecar
rigs and works very well for that.  Also happens to resist brake dive, but
telelever is better for bumpy curves and such.   If you've had the pieces of
one out of the bike, you know they're not that heavy and the position of them
minimizes their effect on unsprung weight.


No sliding bearings. No complicated girders.
No dampers squeezed into stanchions. No telescopic joints. No
plastic-covered balls holding everything in place....

Well, I'm not sure about all that.   Certainly there are damper and telescopic
joints.  Girders too, just what do you consider complicated?   The telelever
system doesn't seem complicated to me.   It allows a pretty standard monoshock
to be used for damping on the front, which is a lot nicer than fork tubes for
adjustment and servicing.

At first look, the Telelever seemed to me a crazy and complex compromise of
sporty/telescopic design motives and something working sort of like a poor
person's Earles. But experience has shown, I think, that the lunatic
replacement of tapered bearings (Earles) with a ball joint and bearings
(Telelever) is durable if still strange.

Tapered bearings are really expensive to produce consistently.  I've never
heard of a failure of that ball joint in spite of all the talk lately of how
flimsy it is.   Although telelever is a little complex, mechanically, it's not
difficult to produce or service and it's got a lot going for it in terms of
giving the front suspension better leverage and strength.

>I find the Telelever works pretty good and possibly has some benefits in
terms of steering geometry over bumps over the old Earles.

Yup.

>While I haven't had a close look at the girder-like fork on the new Ks, it
may be a really swell design, capturing much of the Earles advantage at the
cost of ocmplexity and bad looks.

I think it will work well, but even BMW doesn't consider it an improvement
over the telelever design.  They feel it is limited because it only allows
about 5 inches of suspension travel.   That's enough for a sport bike, but
this system won't work on RTs and GSs.

>I hope I'm not just fixated on an old puppy-love bike. That puppy love
lasted 32 seasons as a daily ride.

Uhhh, OK, Ben.   Save your sweet nothings for the garage.  This is a family
mail list!


- -TB

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