RS ESA front fork suspension improvement

[Richard230]

This weekend I was at the Central California BMW club's Beemer Bash Rally and while there I attended a suspension seminar given by Phil Douglas, owner of Aftershocks. Phil has worked on the suspensions of my previous 2006 Suzuki SV650 and 2007 BMW R12R ESA obtaining very good results, in my opinion. (Phil now performs all of the suspension work for San Jose BMW). At the end of his talk, I asked him if anything could be done about the ESA forks on my 2016 RS to reduce the sharp kickback when hitting bumps and deflection when cornering. He said that he had just worked on a S1000XR, that has a similar suspension with the same problem and asked if he could take a look at my forks and maybe he could make some improvements on the spot. So off we went to check out my RS.

The first thing Phil did was to make sure that there was no binding on my forks by centering and floating the front axle. Attached is a handout from his lecture that explains how that is done. Phil said that you no longer want to bounce the forks up and down to center the axle as we all used to do years ago. (The axle clamps on the RS are tightened to 19nm.)

Then Phil and his helper Gino, loosened the upper and lower fasteners on the triple clamps and lowered the fork tubes in the clamps until the fork caps were flush with the upper triple clamp. After re-tightening all of the fasteners to 19 nm, Phil took the bike out for a short ride and then handed it to me and told me to ride it around and let him know what I thought. I went around the fairgrounds hitting as many bumps as I could and noticed quite an improvement. No more kickback or harsh action. The next day on the way home, I rode about 80 miles on a tight bumpy mountain road and found the fork action to be much improved. I experienced no more sharp kickback from the front suspension and when hitting a bump in the middle of a turn the steering remained stable and secure. And this was on an unfamiliar road and with 7,500 miles on my original Z8 tires. I bet my ride would have been even better if I was riding on a set of new tires.


For such a small amount of work and without having to spend any money for new parts, Phil's modifications sure made a huge difference in the performance of the stock ESA forks on my RS. It is something that you might want to try out if you are looking to improve the action of your ESA forks. (I might add that I only weigh 150 pounds and typically travel light. So if you are heavy and/or ride with a passenger, your experience might differ.)

Also attached is a handout from Phil that provides a glossary of suspension terms that might be of interest.