Q Is the suspension too firm?
Yes. Triumph suggests a variety of suspension settings for the Speed Triple 1200 RS in the owner’s handbook but the bike comes set in ‘standard’ settings from the factory, which are way too harsh for the UK’S roads.
Aim the RS down a B-road and the front end feels a bit sluggish to turn at slow speed while the rear kicks you out of the seat over bumps, resulting in a harsh and uncompromising ride quality that often sees it run wide out of bends unless you’re very aggressive with your inputs. So, what’s the solution?
We checked the RS’S laden sag and found it (with a 14-stone rider) to be 39mm at the rear and 40mm at the front — about right with 120mm of suspension travel. So, leaving the preload alone, we moved onto the damping adjusters in an attempt to get the suspension moving more, using Triumph’s ‘comfort’ settings as a start-point.
We reduced compression and rebound from Triumph’s normal fork settings (15 clicks out on both from fully in) to ‘comfort’ (20 clicks out). After a test ride we went further, taking compression all the way out to minimum and rebound to 22 clicks.
On the shock, we went all the way out on compression (standard is 20 clicks from in, comfort all the way out to minimum) and added two clicks to the rebound, taking it from 16 to 14 from fully in to increase rebound damping.
Where before the overly-stiff forks weren’t allowing the bike to transfer weight forward, leading to the vague feeling, the softer settings allow this to happen. Increasing rebound at the rear reduced the feeling of being kicked out of the seat over bumps. The reduced compression also improved ride quality.
The difference was huge. Although still on the stiff side, the RS now held a line, steered better and inspired more use of the throttle — the previous set-up was indicative of a bike set-up for smooth roads and tracks — and the Speed Triple has always been a B-road blaster.
‘The Speed Triple’s tech is hard to fault’