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I am riding a ktm 350 and are finding the air forks are just beating the snot out of me. I am not sure if they are way to stuff or to soft. I used the sliding thing on the travel portion of the fork and it is showing I am using the full travel. We have tried softening/stiffening and nothing has helped.
Anything tips would help!
Anything tips would help!
What PSI are you running? What are your clickers at, etc? Just going off the fact you are using full travel of the forks are you bottoming out, riding it on track, trail, etc? I would be inclined only on that piece of information to say you need to stiffen the suspension, but again, need to check the other things first.
138 psi no higher than 142
10comp
20 rebound
Shock
12 low speed comp
1 1/2 high speed
15 rebound
The Shop
How many hours, etc. are on this bike for you? I'd be inclined to say go back to stock settings from the manual to get back to baseline.
Step 1: Sag: 35mm/105mm for resting no weight and then rider... won't hurt to double check everything
Step 2: Fork PSI: I'm not sure why you were told only go up to 142 psi when the stock factory manual psi setting is at 150. It's dependent on rider but from 130-156+... my 21 250sx manual for instance states up to 174 max... I'm sitting at stock 151psi on mine at 165lbs dry weight without gear. Once you go around the track (go back to stock PSI) with the forks having 1-1/2" of room left (give yourself a margin of safety to bottom out) of travel using your fork slider then you have your Air PSI in the ballpark.
Step 3: Now you adjust the clickers to fine tune.
Step 4: Check the balance of the suspension as well.. plenty of good youtube videos describe this. But when you are off the bike, and you push down, making sure your bike's front and rear are "balanced" when being compressed. You don't want the front or rear being too stiff or soft (out of balance) when pushing down. I.E. the front not compressing and the back of the bike dropping or vice versa.
I'm no expert though, just what I've read up/learned so take that for what it is
I own the exact same bike, and ultimately I had a mid valve installed by Kreft Moto which made a huge improvement on braking and acceleration square edge bumps and chop. KTM knows this and has made improvements to their newer 2021 fork.
your fork is great for big hits, but square edge stuff will just beat you up because the fork does not work well on chop in stock form, no matter how much it is adjusted.
If you don't want to modify the fork right now, then the best advice I can give is to back out the compression adjuster to 20 and raise the air pressure to 10.6 bar.
as you mentioned, there is a black o ring on the right fork leg, set it to the top of the slider and go ride where you normally do, then see where the O ring is on the fork leg after your ride.
the ideal setting is if the o ring is about 2 inches from the fork lug, then you know you have the correct air pressure for the fork and then you can proceed to experiment with the compression and rebound adjusters to fine tune the feel.
It can take a few riding sessions and a lot of experimentation to get the fork to work for you, but unfortunately because of a lack of a proper mid valve on the fork from that year, it will always beat you up even at the optimal setting.
If you are noticing the harshness on slap-down landings, I am beginning to think this is just an air fork attribute that may not be fixable. But your forks are more advanced than my version.
Air forks seem to highlight a poor shock setting than spring IMO
Pit Row
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