It’s all spinning and sliding back and forth. When you smooth out these areas, things feel lighter and more responsive…
Both the push and pull, and how the bike feels when you’re riding it… it all comes down to reducing friction.
It’s easy to talk about, but actually doing it takes some thought.
Try lifting the fork dust seal occasionally and working it up and down… sometimes you’ll find the movement is surprisingly stiff.
Or the chain might be dry and heavy… don’t forget to lubricate the chain slider too!
Just getting that sliding smoothly can really bring the bike back to life…
Tire pressure too… if you want to get technical, it all comes down to smoothing out every place where something rotates or moves back and forth.
Levers, cables, side stand…
I heard an interesting story about this a long time ago. Back when GP was 2-stroke 500…
With forks, if there’s no friction, it would be better to have none at all, but the sliding resistance from oil seals and such is actually necessary…
When I asked why, the answer was that you can’t generate damping at the level of seal resistance alone, and because of all the various forces at work on such components…
…modern forks are built the way they are. It was a humbling lesson.
At the time I thought, “Huh?” but lately I’m starting to understand it.
If you stick to the basics, things are bound to improve! Maybe that’s the real principle?
Man, this is tedious.
