jack up or not?

scottieducati

After riding my bog standard '92 851 (shy of an Ohlins rear shock) at the track this past weekend, I've decided to go ahead and purchase the jack up kit as well. Much prefer this over clamps at current, but was curious for those running these w/ standard clamps, where your front end ride height is set?

SPONINE

Back in the day Poggipolini (remember them?) made a set of longer heim joints for Jimmy Adamo so he could jack up the rear further than where the stock heims permitted, but it had nothing to do with geometry or steering. It was only as a stop gap measure because at the time we were running stock body work that would drag as well as stock pipes that would also drag. We were just looking for ground clearance. Once we got the body tucked in & some better pipes we lowered it back down. I did a bunch of work with Jim Lindemann on this back in the day & found an optimal setting which is just not that high. If anyone liked the back of any bike jacked up it was Carl Fogarty. I'd be interested to see how long the heims on his bike are, where they are set & compare it to where some here want to go. That's one place where some of this may be a personal preference rather than looking for an actual lap time. Any good racer will tell you than any perceived turn-in improvement garnered by jacking the rear can can easily be negated at the corner exit, so as much as it feels better, it may not be faster. Jimmy Adamo also raced in Suzuka where he was paired with a Japanese rider that preferred a lot of rear ride height. Jimmy went faster with the bike in a normal range but the Japanese rider could not deal, so they had to raise it back up for the race even after Jim pleaded with the guy that they would be faster (Unrelated but Jimmy also ran standard shift pattern in order to accommodate the Japanese rider). About 20 years ago Randy Renfow told me to move my bike back to standard ride height front & rear. I did so & hated the way it turned in. I had to work hard to get it to move, but the payoff was at the exit. It felt awful on the turn in, but it was faster (lap time). Just because the bike turns in faster & remains stable doesn't mean it's better (faster). When a bike is too high in the rear it won't finish the corner. It will change the point at which the rider feels comfortable turning the throttle. It's just like gearing. You can't go by what it feels like. The stopwatch will tell you. Some here may just want the feel & that's fine. Just know that it's not as simple as feel when it comes to actual speed/lap time & that may or may not be what is being chased. Just an FYI, my 888 is set to where Dave Sadowski found it optimal at (among other tracks) Road Atlanta & it's not anywhere near out of range on the stock heims. *Your mileage may vary. *My $02 *Take it for what it's worth.

stafford

scottieducati wroteAfter riding my bog standard '92 851 (shy of an Ohlins rear shock) at the track this past weekend, I've decided to go ahead and purchase the jack up kit as well. Much prefer this over clamps at current, but was curious for those running these w/ standard clamps, where your front end ride height is set?

I've run the jack up kit on both the 888's on the IoM this year, both bikes had their front forks set at the manual suggested standard positions. Whilst one rider preferred to lower the top of the forks in relation to the top yoke the other preferred to raise the height. It's all a personal preference thing, you can of course fine tune whilst using a Corse hoop assembly but they seem to cost more than 30 bucks.

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