1150GSA with Ohlins
 

Dear All,

Can you give me useful feed back on using Ohlins suspension on the 1150GSA? Im sure that its an improvement over the stock units on the road, but my main concern with the bikes standard set up is its ability to cope with dirt road and especially badly corrugated surfaces, where the front unit seems to give up the ghost completely and just cant cope at all, meaning riding at a rather pedestrian pace. Riding quicker made this better at the from, but worse at the rear.

Maybe this is purely an issue with the whole suspension (ie telelever) and changing the units will not make a great deal of difference and Im loathed to spend £1500 or so on something that is only going to make a slight difference.

Any advise is greatly appreciated, Stuart.

Any premium suspension will make a huge difference to the handling as the bike approaches its current handling limitations (bad surfaces / corrugations).

Its probably worth mentioning that Ohlins has a pretty bad durability track record on luggage laden adventure bikes tho - especially the larger heavier bikes like the 1150. A lot have failed in many remote locations. You may recall the Long Way Down guys went through 3 (three) of them in Kenya. I have seen one opened up, and the materials they use are as thin as possible. Thats great for saving weight, but not so great for strength and durability. Ohlins are a great shock, but in the compromise between weight and durability, they are probably better suited to the race track than to adventure riding through 3rd world countries.

Hyperpro, Wilbers, and even WP all make excellent replacements that have a much better record of durability. Another interesting player in the market is Yacugar ... they are a dutch suspension company made up of disillusioned WP engineers, now making premium suspensions with Hyperpro parts.

Make sure you dont just buy a generic shock in a box. For a shock to work well it should be set up for you and customised to your weight, luggage and riding style.