OK; got in about 150mi yesterday with the lighter springs in. My intent was to get the bike more compliant and stable over uneven road surfaces; with the stock springs, the bike tended to get upset too much in twisty bits by pavement cracks and ripples, and would skip over the rougher bits. From the outset, I'd felt the bike was working too much on the springs and not enough on the damping. What you want is for the thing to sit down in its travel and feel fluid but stable - not diving or squatting too much, but pivoting around its center of mass and not from either end. Left a bit to be desired stock...
I'm 165lbs in gear, so I didn't need huge changes. I only went one rate softer on both ends (9.5Nfront/80N rear) versus OEM 10/85 (for the base; S & R models are 10/90). Ballparked the front sag at 40mm and the rear at 35mm for road use, and back to stock 10/10 out at both ends on the damping to start with.
Right off the bat, the static vs loaded sag looked much better now with the lighter springs, telling me the rate was better, as expected. With the OEM springs, I'd had to run too much static sag to get the loaded sag right, which is a dead giveaway the springs are too stiff. FWIW, I always back all my damping adjusters out fully to set sag so you get a better measure of where the spring wants to settle. On the road, the increased compliance was immediately noticeable; not a lounge chair ride of course, but you don't want that anyway with something that goes and stops as hard as a Pani. I prefer the rear link on F so it's still firm out back, but it moves now instead of bucking. Had picked out some particular bits of road to test on, nice twisty bits of mountain road that would be awesome if not for being the worse for wear from the last few winters. Good pavement in general, but with plenty of relatively minor cracks, dips and bumps to test the compliance.
Ran the damping up and down enough to tell that for my weight, I had enough range to work with in terms of general chassis control, but the low speed versus high speed damping on the OEM base suspension is not fantastic. No surprise there, and I expect a more digressive valving setup would help, but it's quite liveable now with proper springs in. As Homer would say, DOH!
Also took the opportunity to play with ride height a bit. Had already dropped the front 3mm from stock (8mm fork showing vs the stock 5mm) to quicken the turn in and load the front more, but wanted to see how the bike felt lower overall. So I took the front to 10mm showing above the triples (about as far as you can go without fender/fairing clearance issues on the base), and shortened the shock 2.5 turns, which is 2.5mm or 5mm of ride height. Net effect was 5mm down at both ends from stock.
I tend to favor my bikes a bit on the low side as it increases stability at speed, and that proved true again here. I like it so far, and you can feel the rear squatting a bit more under accel, but that's going to be a function of the new spring as well. Worked the brakes hard enough to float the rear at speed and am getting full fork travel now, which I wasn't before.
Next step will probably be to take the rear a wee bit higher since the front's on the slow side (imho) with it back to stock attitude. Likely will raise the oil height in the front just a bit as well for dive and bottoming resistance so I'm not relying on stiff comp damping too much for that.
All in all, bike rides and handles better now on the roads I'll be using it on. Success!
