such wise words Flipfly - could you explain this to me please
I've had ESA on two BMWs the LC adventure you needed to toggle between comfort under 40 and sport anything faster - and even then was a nasty mess of cheap poor quality rubbish
My K1300GT had ESA and it was budget rubbish, of out of it depth in sport and a po-going mess in comfort
Then we land with how others manage it - and as i just typed it up, thought I'd show for your displeasure
got a freebie rear shock
its the last "current shock for the 2017 1290 SAT with the white spring", this is a third edition of the damper body, plus just checking parts listing the same electronics module I have, but I guess running different garbage that can't be worse than the rubbish they've flashed at the bike 7 times between two dealerships
as they never bothered (as I knew they wouldn't), to process the rubbish shock that never worked from new, under a warranty claim, and with the second shock being worse than the original, again never working, I asked for my old shock back so I could work out what KTM and or the dealerships never managed. With the intention of getting the rear of the bike to actually have what is called "suspension".
But with covid delays, they've lost it - the boss then said but we have another - a warranty job they didn't need back - you can have that ? - so I agreed something to hit, would be better than nothing, and it turns out its in very good condition and the complete unit - can't see much wrong aside from a tiny bit of rust around the top and bottom coils where the high quality paint doesn't like metal in a few spots.
So I thought can't be too hard, lets put it on, throw the electronics in a tail spin of incompatible lunacy, get 3000 error messages on screen and trash the bike forever (got to be better than how they made it)...
And the end result is - it works - does more than the last two - and now the back almost notices its supposed to move !
Oddly I seem to have active trash in all modes - this morphing madness randomly wandering between rubbish to worse - its only supposed to be there in one mode - but overall its still better then how they made it.
I don't understand the stupidity of KTM's electronics, but then nor does KTM or the two dealers near me, somehow the back's brain impacts the front. And now I seem to have stiffer damping on the front closer matching the rear in whatever they call the grown up mode, next one don't see a change, I guess comfort is fractionally less stiff, and off road changes the front with an almost imperceptible change at the back (all sounds very familiar !!!!!!). But if I ride at 20 mph and bounce the suspension the back is now moving up to 120mm - when with the original I could just get 30mm of suspension travel at the back and the correct replacement they fitted would only move 20mm
The active death suspension feature remains as incompetent as always - changing from OK for fast use at slow speed with reasonably firm damping, and then all damping on the front vanishing as you go faster - the exact opposite of how it should work - well done Austria - those Italian neighbours electrical skills must be rubbing off...
The back must be softer, as the tank slapping madness they gave back from the last dealer visit seems to have gone - these guys are the ones that actually got the electronics in the front to notice they were fitted on the bike after a year's holiday. What they gave back was quicker, the front damping functioned once again, but the bike now had this random wheelie feature, where it might get a meter and a half of air, or it might not lift it at all - no matter how hard you tried.
It liked to offer this interesting lucky dip. It was often as if it monitored your riding and would surprise you doing the exact opposite of what was appropriate (aka active death 2). It would progressively get out of shape when nailing it through the gears, almost going lock to lock by 120 mph and this seems to have gone. But I expect its just waiting for a good moment to pop back - trouble is this is probably a designed in time software feature to sell a new bike - by writing itself off. But I guess KTM didn't reckon on me hating it enough to stay on and just giving it a dam good kicking so it always ends up submitting under the pressure
