Kawi2strokes.com Forum

Well, I used to be a GP racer, and am still a race mechanic, and YES, telescopic forks are a lot better these days than the front one in the pics.

Does anyone here think that a factory, ANY factory would not use this design if it were better than a telescopic fork? NOT A CHANCE. Million buck per bike funds allow manufacturers to do anything they want, and, except for Honda, whom uses their own manufacture Showa, and that is Ohlin's telescopic, and NOT this design.

So, we have racing telescopic forks on race bikes, which are bikes designed to do just WHAT? They are the test beds for the production versions of their race bikes. It has been this way for a couple of decades now, so to say that the ONLY telescopic forks that work correctly are on GP bikes, isn't anywhere accurate. We just had a whole topic on a "new" Kawasaki H2 'street' bike, and an H2R "racer" bike, still street legal, show me the difference in the forks, please, more than likely, there ain't gonna be much, if at all.

Now, NOBODY told the guy to not do what he wanted, not even me, and, I even complimented the fellow on his work, so, get off my case about it, I didn't frag the guy.

I know James Parker (of "RADD" fame) and he has built a few very nice non forked bikes that have worked as well or better than forks. He also did the Yammi GTS design. He had a lot of resistance from the manufactures as it just "looks" and "feels" too different. That's one of Tony's old designs, and will be great for something different.

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Twist the throttle, tilt the horizon, and have a great time. What triples are all about...........

That will be COOL, just for the sake of the COOL factor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Keep posting updates! and keep picking away at it. I need to live vicariously through someone else's projects for a while.......

Like the barn wasn't enough….

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There are only two types of motor sport racing:
Nitro and everything else
(Sometimes referred to as fast and slow)

My neighbor has two BMW Boxer twin bikes with one of those front ends, one is a single bike, the other has a side hack. The single isn't stable in aggressive turns, the feedback feels very vague and 'hunting'. The side hack bike is flat dangerous on the front end on left turns, at any speed, and he knows how to set up side hacks, he has 4 bikes with them. The other 3 have telescopic forks, NO adverse issues at all. He is thinking of removing the hack from the one BMW, and either changing the frame to hold a telescopic fork, then remount the hack, or, sell the ting and put the hack on some other bike with telescopic forks. He always tells me that about the BMW hack, he doesn't "have a death wish" when riding it.

I think the engineering and construction is top notch on this Foale project bike, and I said so earlier, but, the frame is suspect to me, and so is the basic premise of the front end. I think it is a neat engineering project, but won't end up working as well as is touted to do. In my opinion, it will make a really nice living room display bike/conversation piece/dinner table with glass top.

If you're riding a Boxer that feels vague or hunting, I would ask how old the shock is (front & rear) and has the bike ever been down? And, if you're taking the bike to it's limits, is the suspension set up for you? No one here would question my ability to go the limit; I ride a 2010 R1200R boxer that tracks as good or better than any of the other 40 some-odd bikes I've own. Althoulgh it's my daily road rider so i've never had it fully leaned at over say about 80 mph.

BTW.....having said that...BMW is doing away with the telelever and going with inverted forks. I hate to see this change if for only the reason that if I ever have to rebuild another set of forks I think I should shot myself. Just a guess but, a single shock setup like the telelever likely does have a better long term reliability level than fork tubes.

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Busy doing more riding than wrenching.......

Lets not get to the point of creating scenarios to debunk what I wrote, please.

My neighbor has set up over 100 side hacks, a couple for racing, the rest for street use, on all sorts of bikes, and the ONLY one that has an issue of any kind is the BMW with the different front end. He knows what he is doing with the geometry and setup of hacks, and has done more than a few from scratch, no kit, on all sorts of frames.

And, up until about a year ago, he owned the former Bob Braverman magazine Kawasaki 500 triple road racing side hack.

Yes, I heard that BMW was abandoning the front end in favor of a much more friendly inverted telescopic fork.

Holy Sh1t,
This appears to have descend into a bit of a battle ground...

I'm showing MY bike build here.
A bike that handled just fine with the 350LC motor, and WILL do with the H1 motor in it's place. I am not altering Tony Foale's geometry in any way.
Rest assured, when complete, it most certainly will get ridden on the road, as often as I can!

There are many reasons that better conceptual front ends like this aren't used on production bikes, weight, cost, cornering ground clearance (though this is only an issue for ultra fast racers like Ron Haslam was on the Elf Hondas of the 1980s), but, I do NOT give a flying fart for these reasons - I'm building MY bike, MY way, different to the crowd etc.

The bike will work just fine!

Thanks for the positive comments from those who understand why I am building this!!!

BTW have a french friend who managed to rebuilt a Bimota V due with a Bimota tesi frame as the V-due was built at the first stages

Nahhhh.... the only one on that battle ground is H2RTuner. If you go back and search his posting history, you'll find that is very often the case. If there's an argument to be made, well doggone it, tuner is going to make it and let everybody else know how very wrong they are...