Vital MX Insider: Factory Connection West

An overview of the clean, well-equipped FC West shop.

The last time we visited the West Coast headquarters of Factory Connection, they'd just opened their doors, and stuck a first tentative toe into the waters of the So. Cal. Suspension hop-up market. Peter Paige had spearheaded the move, having made the jump from Factory Connection's New Hampshire headquarters to build the new shop.

Now, three-and-a-half years later, Peter is as busy as ever, but this time around he was dialing in a new employee to the intricacies of shock rebuilds, and we sat down with their new West Coast Sales Manager, Mark Rodgers.

Mark ran through how things had grown over the last few years, and how opening up the West Coast shop had affected Factory Connection's overall business. "They were telling me that some of the technicians back at their headquarters were saying, 'Well, that will take away some of our work.' Well, it did take away a little bit, but it gained a lot here in California. And some of the people who were shipping their suspension from California all the way back to New England, now they're not shipping it there. But they're also happier because they're getting it quicker. Back east what it's done is allowed them to speed up their turnaround time, which is so important because the customer gets it back quicker. They're happier and more likely to send it back in for service sooner, rather than prolonging it, thinking, 'Oh man, if I send it back, I'm going to be without it for a week.' So we've taken a little of that load off them, and overall it's grown a lot."

In addition to doubling the size of their West Coast staff over the last few years, they'd also just added a 36-foot Funmover tech support vehicle to their roster of tools. "That has one of the best workshops I've ever seen inside a Funmover," explained Mark. "For doing suspension that's really important. We've been doing trackside stuff back east for a while now, really hitting all the big races back east in New England, and down in Florida and Georgia, and testing down at Millsaps' place a lot. We have a guy that's on the road full-time back there. Now that we have the Funmover out here, we're going to start hitting a lot more races. We just want to take it to the customers and let them know that we're there for them. Any questions they have, anything that they need, the truck will be stocked. When we stocked it for some recent races, I was thinking we probably have more on the truck than 98% of the suspension shops out there. It's exciting for us."

Mark is equally enthused about the guys that he's working with in the company headquarters. "Steve Ross is our general manager back east, he's the day-to-day business guy. He and Ziggy (Factory Connection's President/Owner, Rick Zielfelder) are an awesome team. Steve handles the business side of it, and Ziggy gets to work on the technical portion."

Factory Connection has also added some other well-seasoned veterans to their engineering staff, like Satoru Tanno, who spent years working with Showa, both in Japan and in the U.S. According to Mark, "Satoru has been with us for a year-and-a-half to two years. The amount of knowledge that he has and the stuff that he's seen...you can't buy that. There's no way. He explains things to me all the time that just blow my mind. The amount of knowledge that he has is just phenomenal. It's really cool to be around that type of person."

"As a company, one of our strong points is that we have a lot of quality people. That allows us the flexibility to go and test. When we go and send two or three people out for a week to go test, we have plenty of staff to cover everything and the shop doesn't shut down. We're big enough to where we can do real extensive testing, and the stuff at the shop doesn't suffer while still taking care of the customers."

Looking over their stock of parts in the shop, we were impressed with the number of new items that they'd added in the last few years. "At Factory Connection we race at the highest level, we're enthusiasts, we ride with all different levels of riders, and we develop products throughout the forks and the shocks that'll make a difference, whether for our factory guys or the retail customer. We've got MX spring seats that flow more oil for a plusher feel that everyone wants, and oil lock collars for bottoming resistance. We have different weight pressure springs to give the customer a more supple feel on the initial part of the stroke, and our oversized bladder caps in the rear shock keep the shock cooler and acting more consistent in a long moto or on a hot day...especially with the four-strokes these days where the exhaust runs right next to the shock."

"Our bearing preload ring, which sits on top of the rear shock spring, actually has a needle-bearing surface which allows the spring to coil freely when it's compressing. All those things are the same things our factory team has been running that we make available to our customers so that they can have that really good ride. It's all those things that add up to make the complete package."

Probably more than half of their parts room is devoted to springs, and Mark explained, "Spring rates are not really just an across-the-board thing, like, 'This is how much you weigh, and this is the spring you need.' It's really the type of rider you are, the level you're at, how much you weigh, how tall you are, and also the type of riding you're doing. Those four things are really important for figuring out spring rates. We encourage people to call us, and with all the information we have, we can tell them the exact spring rates they need."

"We're only a motocross and off-road suspension company. We don't do street bikes, and we don't do ATVs. We have all our springs manufactured to our specifications, and they're quality controlled by us. On some of the more popular bikes we do every single spring rate. We'll go 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 on Showas, because we feel with that many riders and that many bikes, going from a 4.2 to a 4.4, that's a pretty big jump. We really want to fine-tune it for our customers. And the same goes for rear shock springs as well."

As far as the suspension tuning itself, and which brands they work on, Mark had a simple answer. "Everything. Literally everything. All Hondas, all Yamahas, Suzukis, Kawasakis,

KTMs...we have really good settings for KTMs and the WP suspension, as well as some good specialty parts for those. We do Huskys, Polinis...pretty much anything that's off-road, as long as it's got Showa, KYB, WP, Marzocchi...even some Sachs stuff that comes on some of the Husqvarnas. We do that, too."

So do Factory Connection customers need to be able to fluently "speak" suspensionese? As Mark explained, "We've got an 800 number and a big phone staff of people whose job it is to talk to you and understand what your needs are. But also, if you don't know what you want, that's just as good. We've had some really good riders...guys who've ridden for some of the best support teams and are now maybe on the backside of their career, riding purely for fun. We did one about a month ago and I asked, what do you like? He said, "I know you guys know suspension. Here's how much I weigh, here's the riding I'm doing, here's what I'm feeling in the bike...you guys tell me what I need. If a customer knows exactly what they want, or have no idea what they want... just call us. We'll walk you through it, get the information we need from you, and get you a great setting that we've developed through our years of testing."

How about afterward? "We include a really good suspension guide when someone gets their suspension done here. It tells them where all their stuff is set at and gives them a recommended maintenance schedule. We really recommend doing a full service every 40 hours, and with our full service we pull everything apart, polish all your tubes, check all your wear parts, and that's really important. Just like an engine, you've got oil and metal moving around in there...stuff's going to wear out. You need to do the maintenance on it. We provide the same exact suspension guide to everyone, and it goes over all that information in there, including a lot of tips on setup and troubleshooting. If anyone wants to call us and say, 'Hey, can I get one of those guides, just to look at?' Absolutely. We know that if people are comfortable with us and the information we're giving them, we know that they'll come back. That's what we want. We want that open line of communication to start, and it just builds from there."

More Info:

www.factoryconnection.com
(800) 221-7560

East
10 Amarosa Dr.
Rochester, NH 03868

West
1701 Rimpau Ave. #104
Corona, CA 92881

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