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Telelever suspension
- Thread starter bigpoppa
- Start date
Telelever suspensions separate out the braking forces from the steering.
You know how when you squeeze hard on the front brakes, the steering gets stiffer? You won't feel that with a Telelever front end. There is minimal front-end brake dive as the forces get transferred to the wishbone suspension behind the forks.
Most of the time when you're just riding around you're not going to feel a difference. When you feel a difference is when you're hard braking, like an emergency stop, especially in a turn - the bike will feel more stable and the steering won't stiffen and the bike won't stand up.
I think it's a good road feature, generally speaking.
Not so good for the track, when you're used to the feedback from traditional fork suspension to determine the limits of traction, speed and grip. Telelever removes all that information so you're left guessing what exactly is happening when trail-braking hard into a corner. It's a very disconnected feeling.
Took my wife's R1200ST out on track on one of our first track days. Rode that and a traditional fork suspension back-to-back. Very noticeable when braking into the corners!
You know how when you squeeze hard on the front brakes, the steering gets stiffer? You won't feel that with a Telelever front end. There is minimal front-end brake dive as the forces get transferred to the wishbone suspension behind the forks.
Most of the time when you're just riding around you're not going to feel a difference. When you feel a difference is when you're hard braking, like an emergency stop, especially in a turn - the bike will feel more stable and the steering won't stiffen and the bike won't stand up.
I think it's a good road feature, generally speaking.
Not so good for the track, when you're used to the feedback from traditional fork suspension to determine the limits of traction, speed and grip. Telelever removes all that information so you're left guessing what exactly is happening when trail-braking hard into a corner. It's a very disconnected feeling.
Took my wife's R1200ST out on track on one of our first track days. Rode that and a traditional fork suspension back-to-back. Very noticeable when braking into the corners!
That likely means that "race" bikes are best served with conventional forks but doesn't necessarily mean that Telelever isn't a better system for typical street riding.
There is a history of telelever-style suspension being used in racing. Like the BMW Boxercup series, where all the bikes are running telelever.
But just because they were all R1100Ses...
All joking aside, the telelever is derived from the British-designed Saxon-Motodd front suspension, which Italian manufacturer Laverda fitted on their race bikes.
Something looks familiar?
This rando-trivia post brought to you by Cliff Clavin.
But just because they were all R1100Ses...
All joking aside, the telelever is derived from the British-designed Saxon-Motodd front suspension, which Italian manufacturer Laverda fitted on their race bikes.
Something looks familiar?
This rando-trivia post brought to you by Cliff Clavin.
There is a history of telelever-style suspension being used in racing. Like the BMW Boxercup series, where all the bikes are running telelever.
But just because they were all R1100Ses...
All joking aside, the telelever is derived from the British-designed Saxon-Motodd front suspension, which Italian manufacturer Laverda fitted on their race bikes.
View attachment 44647
This rando-trivia post brought to you by Cliff Clavin.
There is a lot going on in this photo that I have questions about
-What is that stand?
-Those twin shocks seem anachronistic with everything else on the bike. I found a forum post somewhere that says that may have been intentional... but why?
-The lower front suspension arm has some kind of adjustable pivot? Is that necessarily a feature of this style of front suspension, or was that a semi-common thing for adjusting rake?
-Are those things above the bars some kind of caps on the "forks", or are they fluid resevoirs?
-That way of adapting brake calipers to forks is so simple, so obvious that I can't believe I never thought of it before. Is that common?
Adjustable pivot for the "control arm" allows the amount of anti-dive to be adjusted by moving the pivot up/down (parallel to fork centerline) and allows wheelbase (and rake angle and trail) to be adjusted by moving the pivot fore/aft (perpendicular to fork centerline). If it is a 90-degree angle between the fork centerline and the control arm at nominal ride height, it will act like normal forks (no anti-dive). If you raise the chassis-end pivot, you get more anti-dive. Note in that photo, that it looks like the angle between the fork centerline and the control arm is pretty close to 90 degrees. This angle obviously changes with suspension travel ... annoyingly, it will go towards anti-dive when the forks extend and towards pro-dive during compression (i.e. braking). The BMW models with Telelever have a really long control arm in order to minimise that. With a transverse in-line engine, no can do. BMW has another system called Duolever, which is even more complicated, with an upper and lower front control arm and another linkage to get the steering motion from the handlebars into the fork assembly, which allows the arms to be shortened so that it can be used on bikes with other drivetrain layouts.
I found this article that has some pretty good illustrations in it: Why MotoGP Bikes Don’t Use BMW-Style Telelever Suspension - BikesRepublic
Among other things, you can see the linkage that translates the pure turning action of the handlebars into the out-of-plane turning action of the forks with the complex Duolever arrangement.
The new Honda Goldwing is like this: https://www.cycleworld.com/resizer/...aws.com/public/OZWJ4TKD6XMLHF23O44ZQ2DACU.jpg
I found this article that has some pretty good illustrations in it: Why MotoGP Bikes Don’t Use BMW-Style Telelever Suspension - BikesRepublic
Among other things, you can see the linkage that translates the pure turning action of the handlebars into the out-of-plane turning action of the forks with the complex Duolever arrangement.
The new Honda Goldwing is like this: https://www.cycleworld.com/resizer/...aws.com/public/OZWJ4TKD6XMLHF23O44ZQ2DACU.jpg
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