Scooterotica

Hi All,

Can anyone give me there opinion of the best front damper for a race scooter, with or without anti dive.

rossi46 wrote:Hi All,

Can anyone give me there opinion of the best front damper for a race scooter, with or without anti dive.

Once you have anti-dive fitted, the dampers become less of an issue.

On a standard set up, when you brake, all of the force goes through the springs and dampers....hence everyone fits proggresive 3-stage springs and heavy duty dampers etc. But the brake caliper is free to rotate on an anti-dive, and when you brake, all of the force dissipates through the anti-dive arm that links the caliper to the fork leg. Thus....your springs and dampers then only function to smooth out bumps and lumps in the road (or track) and not to endure the same level of heavy braking forces that occur without anti-dive.

I run standrad springs and escort dampers on my racer!!

A selection of anti-dive kits n pics......

And to answer your question..... ......my personal suggestion would be Franks/Rick Presleys new CNC dampers.....made for Lambrettas, by Lambretta rider/owner/engineers.......i'd forget the Daytonna/Kawasaki dampers.

My earlier posts were just to illustrate that top noch dampers are very lovely, and nice if you can afford them (wish i could), but are more functional on a set up that doesnt have anti-dive.

(IMHO)

Thanks the only problem for me is I dont really want to start welding on the forks as I have jsut had them painted with the rest of the bike at a snall fortune I think some one said that Chris at CS Engineering does a kit but I tried calling him but the number on his web site is not working ? any ideas of how to get hold of him ?

rossi46 wrote:Thanks the only problem for me is I dont really want to start welding on the forks as I have jsut had them painted with the rest of the bike at a snall fortune

The LTH kit doesn't need welding, have a look again at mine above....it bolts onto the fork leg.

See here: http://www.lambretta-teile.de/product_i ... retta.html

drunkmunkey6969 wrote:

rossi46 wrote:Thanks the only problem for me is I dont really want to start welding on the forks as I have jsut had them painted with the rest of the bike at a snall fortune

The LTH kit doesn't need welding, have a look again at mine above....it bolts onto the fork leg.

See here: http://www.lambretta-teile.de/product_i ... retta.html

Yeah I looked well nice bit of kit, but out of stock and you cant just buy the anti dive kit its a full set up

here are a few cs engineering has done

drunkmunkey6969 wrote:

rossi46 wrote:Hi All,

Can anyone give me there opinion of the best front damper for a race scooter, with or without anti dive.

Once you have anti-dive fitted, the dampers become less of an issue.

On a standard set up, when you brake, all of the force goes through the springs and dampers....hence everyone fits proggresive 3-stage springs and heavy duty dampers etc. But the brake caliper is free to rotate on an anti-dive, and when you brake, all of the force dissipates through the anti-dive arm that links the caliper to the fork leg. Thus....your springs and dampers then only function to smooth out bumps and lumps in the road (or track) and not to endure the same level of heavy braking forces that occur without anti-dive.

I run standrad springs and escort dampers on my racer!!

I totally agree, I fitted Kwaka dampers to try and combat dive, but to no avail as they became too stiff for normal use once you'd made any impact to reduce dive. I then fitted anti-dive and turned the dampers down to a light setting and I now think the front end feels the best I've ridden.

Rossi.... are you actually talking about a race bike here - or just a fast road bike?


I've not actually ridden a race scooter with anti dive, so cannot fully comment ...... but the majority of race scooters do not actually use them, despite being made legal for Group 4 a couple of years ago.


My own Group 4 scooter has Taffspeed progressive springs, with the nylon spacer bush replaced by some one-off machined stainless steel bushes which are 12mm thick. This stiffens up the front end considerably. I then used standard City branded dampers.

Additionally I have rebuilt the fork links and replaced the nylon bushes with one off machined brass bushes. This has also helped the front handling, as any lateral movement is reduced .

From a road point of view... not sure in reality just how much would be gained by anti dive?