Baseline geometry settings for 1199?

I put a set of Ohlins 30MM cartridges and a TTX 36 GP rear on my base model 1199.

....I'm now running 1:41's at NYST vs. the 1:34's I was running on stock suspension.

I'm wondering if maybe the TTX isn't the exact length of the stock shock or if I otherwise screwed with the ride height adjustment and don't remember (the last suspension guy that looked at it noticed that the jam nut on the ride height adjustment was loose....I don't remember ever loosening it, but maybe it even allowed the adjustment bolt to sneak out of place).

Also, I think I have the forks back at the same height they started at, but I didn't measure it to the Nth degree (the order of operations was remove forks, send off for cartridge install, read book on suspension and learn how much changes when you move the forks up or down a couple mm in the triple, regret not measuring fork height prior to removal).


The rear is definitely not hooking up - I can feel it sliding even when I'm much less aggressive with my roll-on than I used to be.

As far as corner entry and mid-corner, the bike *can* initiate a turn and carve through just fine *if* nothing upsets the chassis. If I do the smallest thing wrong though, it wobbles around and takes a long time to settle down. This is mostly on fast corners.

I've had a couple of suspension guys look at my bike, set the sag, play with clicks, preload, etc. - but none of them have mentioned much about geometry.

I know if I start messing around with the rear ride height it will have some impact on the front, so I'm not planning on going crazy here, but I thought I'd start out by checking to see if my bike is close to baseline or if it has gotten out of whack. Do you just count the threads showing on the ride height adjustment, or is there something else you check?

Found some numbers for rear ride height and fork height here,


Stock numbers are:
rear measured as an eye-to-eye length of 309mm
forks measured from the top of the fork cap to the top of the triple - 6mm.

Looks like jarelj tried it at 306mm and 9mm and didn't like it.

Sounds like something is horribly wrong to gain 7 secs/lap, can't just be a simple ride height issue. What are you running for spring rates front/rear on the new suspension and how much do you weigh in gear?

Interesting thread, but way over this dumb Grunts head.

jarelj said:

Sounds like something is horribly wrong to gain 7 secs/lap, can't just be a simple ride height issue. What are you running for spring rates front/rear on the new suspension and how much do you weigh in gear?

Click to expand...

I weigh ~205 lbs. without gear.

Front sag: 20-25mm free / 37 rider
Rear sag: 13mm free / 30 rider

Rear spring is 105 Nmm.
Front springs were 11.0/11.0...but

I believe they are 10.5/10.5 now (swapped out by a suspension shop), if anybody can decipher these spring codes we can be sure:
04744-05/L1014
04744-10/L2214


....but hopefully that kickstand switch bypass I just bought from Ducati of Omaha will fix everything ;-)

jarelj said:

Sounds like something is horribly wrong to gain 7 secs/lap

Click to expand...

Tell me about it. I run a 1:40 on my mortard.....and that track has a 150 mph front straight (well, 140 now with my ...... drives)

PS- I'm not thinking ride height so much as swing arm angle. Too much anti-squat would explain most of my problems.....too little trail could explain the rest.

I suspect when I measure it I will find it is too low in the front and too tall in the rear.

Ductard said:

Front springs were 11.0/11.0...but

I believe they are 10.5/10.5 now (swapped out by a suspension shop), if anybody can decipher these spring codes we can be sure:

04744-05/L1014
04744-10/L2214

Click to expand...

The first one is a 10.5 and the other one is a 10.0 - assuming those are both in, it looks like you are running split spring rates to get a 10.25 average.

Ductard said:

I weigh ~205 lbs. without gear.

Front sag: 20-25mm free / 37 rider
Rear sag: 13mm free / 30 rider

Rear spring is 105 Nmm.
Front springs were 11.0/11.0...but

I believe they are 10.5/10.5 now (swapped out by a suspension shop), if anybody can decipher these spring codes we can be sure:
04744-05/L1014
04744-10/L2214


....but hopefully that kickstand switch bypass I just bought from Ducati of Omaha will fix everything ;-)

Click to expand...

That just doesn't add up, if you're 205, I would have to see it to believe it that you can run a 105Nm spring on the back and get 13 free/30 rider for sag. That's 3 rates stiffer than I would run for someone your weight. I am 205 in gear, and I have an 85Nm spring on the back with 10/28 sag. Your stock suspension would have had a 90Nm spring on it, and you were 7 seconds faster, why go to a super-stiff 105Nm spring? Not knowing anything else, I'd pinpoint that as the issue, not the ride height. Ultra-stiff spring on the rear, bike doesn't squat enough, spins up the rear as soon as you touch the throttle. Keeps weight bias too far forward mid-turn and makes the bike unstable.

jarelj said:

That just doesn't add up, if you're 205, I would have to see it to believe it that you can run a 105Nm spring on the back and get 13 free/30 rider for sag. That's 3 rates stiffer than I would run for someone your weight. I am 205 in gear, and I have an 85Nm spring on the back with 10/28 sag. Your stock suspension would have had a 90Nm spring on it, and you were 7 seconds faster, why go to a super-stiff 105Nm spring? Not knowing anything else, I'd pinpoint that as the issue, not the ride height. Ultra-stiff spring on the rear, bike doesn't squat enough, spins up the rear as soon as you touch the throttle. Keeps weight bias too far forward mid-turn and makes the bike unstable.

Click to expand...

Makes sense to me. I had no intention of putting ultra stiff springs in it. Bought the Ohlins kit off of Dan Kyle racing and gave them my weight as 205-210lbs without gear. To this day they swear up and down they gave me the right springs.

The front springs started out as 11.0's, and the same suspension guys that swapped them out said they wanted to swap the rear, but apparently that spring isn't very common and neither one of them had it in stock.

The preload is backed off as far as I feel comfortable without going past the threads to get those sag numbers...

I think somes Ohlins vendors are going off some Ohlins factory suggested rates. I also saw a post somewhere they revised the rates for Panigale down one step. Just recalling from memory, don't flame me.

When I got my TTX2 shock, they sent me a 85nm for my 135 naked ass. I went down to 75nm but had to dial in a lot of preload to keep the rear sag under 30mm, the bike was squatting on exits. Now I am back to 80nm, works just fine.

308mm shock length eye to eye, 5mm fork showing above top triple.

jyli19 said:

I think somes Ohlins vendors are going off some Ohlins factory suggested rates. I also saw a post somewhere they revised the rates for Panigale down one step. Just recalling from memory, don't flame me.

When I got my TTX2 shock, they sent me a 85nm for my 135 naked ass. I went down to 75nm but had to dial in a lot of preload to keep the rear sag under 30mm, the bike was squatting on exits. Now I am back to 80nm, works just fine.

308mm shock length eye to eye, 5mm fork showing above top triple.

Click to expand...

Funny, after my experience I've sworn up and down to people that I bet Ohlins would have to re-publish their spring rates for the 1199.

I guess what got me off the hunt of a softer spring was that I put a zip-tie on the shock and it looks like I'm using all the travel. Maybe the compression damping is tuned way to far down and on top of that, this particular track (NYST) has a bump in the front straight that I think would bottom out most setups. It's not really a harsh bump, but you're going like 130 when you hit it and the rear compresses pretty hard (the 1199 picks the front end up at that point....my 600 did not.)

you can always try a different shock spring, it's only around $100, takes 20 minutes to swap out, no special tools needed.

Concur with Jarel's comments; that is a mismatch between front and rear spring rates. For reference, the stock base model suspension you say were so much quicker on had 10N springs in front, with the rear at about 86N (Ducati don't publish the rate, that's going from someone who tested the OEM Base spring on an Intercomp spring rater). The front's probably about right, so with a mixed rate 10.25N there you should be looking at around a 90N in back I would think, certainly no more than 95 tops.

Steve B said:

Concur with Jarel's comments; that is a mismatch between front and rear spring rates. For reference, the stock base model suspension you say were so much quicker on had 10N springs in front, with the rear at about 86N (Ducati don't publish the rate, that's going from someone who tested the OEM Base spring on an Intercomp spring rater). The front's probably about right, so with a mixed rate 10.25N there you should be looking at around a 90N in back I would think, certainly no more than 95 tops.

Click to expand...

Hmm...thanks.

Does anybody have comments to make about the sag being "right" even if the spring is wrong?

I anticipate a fairly bruising conversation with Dan Kyle to try to get them to send me a new spring, which they said they would do since I didn't request a specific spring, I just gave them my weight. But...they wouldn't talk to me about anything until I gave them my sag numbers, so I'm not sure what they're going to say once I give them sag numbers that are theoretically ok....

When I called them up last week I have to say they seemed a bit "short" with me when I said I thought my spring was too stiff but didn't have my sag numbers off-hand. I wasn't a jerk and didn't demand that they send me new springs, but they seemed to jump straight to about a 7 out of 10 on the jerk-o-meter. Oh, and they made a big deal out of me saying I was about 200 lbs, when I said 205-210 when I ordered the shocks....(isn't 205 "about" 200? - your weight can fluctuate more than that between morning and evening) Anyways, I weighed 203.8 stripped down last time I was at the Dr's, so I don't think my incorrect weight reporting caused the problem).

Maybe I just sounded like a numbnuts who tried to not do any setup, but I had two of the most well known suspension guys (at least by my perception) at the CCS / midatlantic level bounce/click on my bike and tell me the rear was too stiff. (GMD Computrak Boston and Markbuilt). Add MDM (another suspension guy well known to the CCS community) to the mix that did the cartridge install and swapped out one of the fork springs b/c he said they were too stiff. He just had the forks though, so he didn't comment on the rear spring.

I think I'm going to call Ohlins USA first and see what springs they say I should have for my weight....

Steve B said:

Concur with Jarel's comments; that is a mismatch between front and rear spring rates. For reference, the stock base model suspension you say were so much quicker on had 10N springs in front, with the rear at about 86N (Ducati don't publish the rate, that's going from someone who tested the OEM Base spring on an Intercomp spring rater). The front's probably about right, so with a mixed rate 10.25N there you should be looking at around a 90N in back I would think, certainly no more than 95 tops.

Click to expand...

BTW...I don't suppose I'd be lucky enough that the stock shock uses the same size spring as the TTX?

Nobody near me stocks these springs. Would be awesome to be able to throw that in as a stop-gap for this weekend. As it is, I may just re-mount the OEM spring so the bike is rideable, but next weekend is an LRRS race weekend so I need to get it sorted by then.

Watch the Dave Moss Masterclass suspension vid on YouTube it will answer
your issues.

http://youtu.be/Ikjw4IheeF4

jarelj said:

That just doesn't add up, if you're 205, I would have to see it to believe it that you can run a 105Nm spring on the back and get 13 free/30 rider for sag. That's 3 rates stiffer than I would run for someone your weight. I am 205 in gear, and I have an 85Nm spring on the back with 10/28 sag. Your stock suspension would have had a 90Nm spring on it, and you were 7 seconds faster, why go to a super-stiff 105Nm spring? Not knowing anything else, I'd pinpoint that as the issue, not the ride height. Ultra-stiff spring on the rear, bike doesn't squat enough, spins up the rear as soon as you touch the throttle. Keeps weight bias too far forward mid-turn and makes the bike unstable.

Click to expand...

Steve B said:

Concur with Jarel's comments; that is a mismatch between front and rear spring rates. For reference, the stock base model suspension you say were so much quicker on had 10N springs in front, with the rear at about 86N (Ducati don't publish the rate, that's going from someone who tested the OEM Base spring on an Intercomp spring rater). The front's probably about right, so with a mixed rate 10.25N there you should be looking at around a 90N in back I would think, certainly no more than 95 tops.

Click to expand...

Called Ohlins USA directly and they wanted to put me into a 100N/mm spring...I pushed for a 95N/mm...and having it overnighted so I can try it out this weekend. You guys feel pretty confident that I should go more than 1 spring rate different?


To add one piece of info: I bought the bike from the owner of a Ducati dealership, so I'm not 100% sure he hadn't gone to a stiffer spring.

Ductard said:

BTW...I don't suppose I'd be lucky enough that the stock shock uses the same size spring as the TTX?

Nobody near me stocks these springs. Would be awesome to be able to throw that in as a stop-gap for this weekend. As it is, I may just re-mount the OEM spring so the bike is rideable, but next weekend is an LRRS race weekend so I need to get it sorted by then.

Click to expand...

Not quite the same, but it might do. I replaced the Sachs OEM spring on my Base straight away with an 80N 21040 series Ohlins Spring from Jarel. ID on that was 51mm, OD 72mm, and the length was 158mm. As I recall, the Sachs spring was 160mm long and maybe a mm or so larger in ID, so small difference). I think the std TTX spring is a bit shorter, but you may have enough space and threads on the shock body to accomodate it. Easy to measure the length from collar to thread end in any case.

ADDDED Moot Point; I didn't see the new post about overnighting a spring. I'd say a 95N is a much better start than just one step down from the one everyone's told you was way too stiff; you already know from experience that a softer spring was faster for you even with inferior damping. 95 might still be a wee bit stiff relative to the front, but if you still have the 11's you had before you could experiment with one of those on one side as a next step, with the 10 in the other side.

Steve B said:

Not quite the same, but it might do. I replaced the Sachs OEM spring on my Base straight away with an 80N 21040 series Ohlins Spring from Jarel. ID on that was 51mm, OD 72mm, and the length was 158mm. As I recall, the Sachs spring was 160mm long and maybe a mm or so larger in ID, so small difference). I think the std TTX spring is a bit shorter, but you may have enough space and threads on the shock body to accomodate it. Easy to measure the length from collar to thread end in any case.

ADDDED Moot Point; I didn't see the new post about overnighting a spring. I'd say a 95N is a much better start than just one step down from the one everyone's told you was way too stiff; you already know from experience that a softer spring was faster for you even with inferior damping. 95 might still be a wee bit stiff relative to the front, but if you still have the 11's you had before you could experiment with one of those on one side as a next step, with the 10 in the other side.

Click to expand...

Ok, thanks. I don't have the 11's anymore (the suspension guys swapped them for free so they kept the springs).

If there's a difference between the right rear spring for my weight vs. the right spring relative to the front, I'd rather get the right one for my weight and be done with it. It will be easier to stiffen up the front if need be. The rear has been a challenge because nobody stocks those springs but they all seem to have front springs that will fit.

Also, worth mentioning - re: the front springs, I don't think even the experienced suspension guys are used to seeing as much tube showing as these forks do when they're bottomed. I took the springs out to check / adjust the fork oil height and there was 30mm between the top of the axle lug (?) and the rubber band travel indicator when the fork is bottomed and the band is pushed against the dust seal. I think I saw somebody measured 33mm to the dust seal?

Either way, I think the fact that I looked like I was using ~1/2 of the travel, when I was really using more like 3/4 might have made them err on the side of a hair too light, if anything. I don't know if "Front sag: 20-25mm free / 37 rider" suggests correct spring rates, but we'll see what happens once the rear isn't so problematic and I can squeeze the brake with my normal lever pressure.

Steve B said:

The first one is a 10.5 and the other one is a 10.0 - assuming those are both in, it looks like you are running split spring rates to get a 10.25 average.

Click to expand...

You mind sharing how you got that info?

All the Ohlins spring decoders I could find seem to be for rear springs (where -05 and -10 are Ohlins specific codes that give rates that are way off from what these would be).

Unless it's as simple as -10 = 10.0 and -05 = 10.5, so that a 9.5 would be -95 and an 11.5 would be -15...am I on the right track?