r1100r fork travel question

[sonny]

hello.. i'm a newbie to the R1100R... my question is: when my bike is on the side or center stand, the forks are stretched out.. however, when i take it off the stands, it seems to bottom out. when i put on my front brakes and rock the bile back and forth, it seems there is hardly any travel at all before it bottoms out .... is that normal ?
thanks for any responses...
Sonny

[Motorrad]

I wouldn't be concerned about the fork shock extension, because the suspension for the bike is provided by the tele-lever strut (front). However, the travel should be approx 4 1/2 inches.

[sonny]

so when you put the brakes on, and pump the front forks... they should go down 4 or so inches and bounce back up ? cos mine only goes down about an inch and hardly bounces back up at all.
i'm so confused ..

[Motorrad]

The TOTAL travel is approx 4 1/2 inches, the weight of the bike will eat some of that distance up, plus your own weight. I get roughly a 1 1/2 inch deflection when I rock my bike forward. I weigh about 175 lbs and could not generate enough force to fully compress (bottom-out) my suspension. Are you sure it's bottoming out?

[sonny]

from what you are saying... out of 4.5 inches, the bike takes up 3inches,.. and there's 1.5 inches left. that's what it seems like on my bike too. so i guess its normal after all. i thought something was worn out..
btw... what's in the fork anyways ?
sonny

[Motorrad]

I'm sorry, maybe I'm not explaining it correctly. You SHOULD'NT have only 1 1/2 inches to go before you bottom out. If that was the case, every time you hit a bump your teeth would fall out. I was saying that I could only force my suspension down about 1 1/2 inches, but it certainly WASN'T bottoming out.

[Motorrad]

Also...

The fork shock is basically a tube within a sliding tube, and although it does have oil in it, according to the engineers, it doesn’t provide much suspension.

[single650]

The front wishbone setup seperates braking fom suspension on the oilheads. They are designed NOT to dive under braking, therefore putting the brake on and rocking the bike forward will have little effect.

To check suspension travel just push down on the bars

[leno]

Welcome to the world of BMW where things happen differantly. Those forks are not real forks but just tubes to connect the handle bars to the front wheel and to stop people freaking out. You will find that the front of the bike tracks the road better particully on poorer quality roads.

[sonny]

ok... sorry to be so persistent .. maybe i should rephrase my question ...when my bike is on the center stand... the forks show 5.25 inches of chrome (distance between the bottom of the black plastic fork cap and the top of the boot.).. when the bike is sitting straight on two wheels, and with me sitting on it.. there is 3.5 inches of chrome. would this be normal ????
thanks again ...
Sonny

[seanwu]

By right its should be shorten but I don't know by how much. if you really want to test to see if the front fork will dive, when you travel at around 20km/hr, try using the rear brake only; this way the front fork dive more obviously then its using front brake. You can judge if the fork had max out or not.
The reason for using rear brake its because the front fork is using telelevel therefore, it wouldn't dive down no matter how hard you apply front brake, thats a good thing about BMW bikes.

[single650]

Sonny, That seems pretty normal to me.

I was watching mine on the road (not a very good idea) and it moves about 1 to 1 1/2 inches over bumps and stuff.

Its not as much as normal sprung forks because of the BMW design

[sonny]

good to know that my bike's front end is 'normal'....thanks for all your help...
sonny