Suspension Rx Needed

I discovered after the last round in May that I was starting to get an interesting wear pattern around my rear tire on the right side. I put the bike away and didn't think much of it. Back on track, I noticed it again after 1 practice session -- the surface of the tire was tearing off in a strip on the right side. I went ahead and used that tire for the race, and it started to slide a little in right-hand turns, officially messing with my head and modulating my throttle hand a little bit.

Changed to a harder tire for the second race and came in to discover a similar wear band, this time on the left.

When tires are tearing like that, it generally indicates a suspension problem. The suspension mainly serves the purpose of keeping the tires on the ground and gripping. If the rear shock is not set up properly, the tire can hop, skip, slide, spin and do all sorts of other things as the bike rolls over bumps, changes direction and tries to get the power from the engine to the ground. This can lead to the sort of problems I'm starting to see.

I've never spent much time worrying about suspension setup because I've not felt fast enough that it would be a limiting factor. Now that I'm picking up some speed, it's time to start paying attention and learning a little bit about it. So it's off to Phil Douglass at Aftershocks to have the bike worked over. Who knows, I might find a couple seconds on track once the suspension is behaving better.

Stay tuned.

Cheers...