While everyone likes to go fast and dominate on the track, nothing is more important than safety when riding your motorcycle. You can’t get faster laying on the couch with a broken leg! Thousands of riders sustain serious injuries every year – sometimes through not taking the right precautions and safety measures, and sometimes these accidents are unavoidable.
That being said – the vast majority of motorcycle riders are just fine, and ride for years without sustaining serious injury. There’s always some amount of risk involved with any motorsport. However, motorcyclists need to be particularly careful. Unlike a car or truck, there are no airbags, roll cages or a metal shell to protect you in the event of a crash, which is a big reason of why crashes are more dangerous for us.
In addition to having the proper safety equipment – helmet, gloves, boots, pants, knee braces, etc. – one of the biggest ways you can prevent injuries and keep yourself safe is by having the motorcycle setup correctly for your weight and ability. This includes not only ensuring the correct function of controls, motor and brakes, but the often overlooked area of suspension setup.
By having the correct sag on your forks and shock, your motorcycle is better able to handle corners and bumps in the road, or landings from jumps, braking bumps and whoops on the track. This gives you more control, better endurance, and the ability to avoid accidents when you get out of shape. In order to correctly set the suspension, you’ll need a sag tool or a tape measure and helpers to measure your suspension unloaded (no weight on the bike), and when you’re sitting on the bike in a normal riding position. Then, you can adjust the spring preload or air pressure (air forks) accordingly. You can find recommended sag settings from a number of sources, including your owner’s manual or suspension tuner recommendations. We always have a list of recommendations in the documentation section of our site as well.
At Motool, we want you to have the best ride of your life every time you get on your bike – and we want you to be safe while enjoying it! Check out our digital sag scale, the Slacker, which makes suspension setup fast, simple and accurate; and remember to ALWAYS wear your safety gear!
