single damper screw shocks are a disaster... (which by the way is what all ESA shocks get till the R1300GS)
my non ESA GS is the only bike I ever tried after market shocks on - for 40 years on Jap bikes I just rode things to their limits and as reliably terrible, you can happily work around each bikes compromises
However, the GS suspension was so horrific I quickly found a three damper screw White Power shock for the back. In some utter madness the 140 nm spring rate of the stock shock was deleted from the WP catalogue and it came with a 120 nm shock - due to the very wrong modern thinking of a spring only supports the ride height and the damping locks up how it behaves - that madness might work on a freshly ironed rack track with it 10 times gripper surface - but for road use it plain stupid. On a what we call roads I need the shock to function not lock the rear end solid so it lifts the bike and throws you in a hedge
When I put it on the bike the 120 nm spring couldn't even support the bikes weight let alone a 120 kg rider - With no experience of what I needed, I decided I needed a 175nm spring and had one custom made by DK Faulkner -
https://dfaulknersprings.com/shop/ and its almost perfect - if I as doing things again I'd go for a 180 nm
The great bit about the WP three damper screw thing is it has two different compression rate adjustments - which is what they all need - 1) is for sharp stuttering nasty short wave hits, and 2) is to control long wave wallow from slower larger movement undulation. I set it up once and have never touched the damping screws in 20k miles and 8 years - its been serviced and the guy was adamant parts supply means I should off load it ASAP
On a roll and unable to find that idea for the front (as WP got bought and exclusively moved to in-house KTM stuff, part and servicing have more or less vanished) - I got a used single screw front wilbers - its almost as bad as the original non ESA joke my 2007 bike came with - with the single damper of the wilbvers offering no useful set up. I had it serviced and told the guy is was harsh and horrid, he gave it back saying he'd tweaked the shim stack for better compliance and I should run 14 turns out from fully in (I seem to recollect) it was just as awful post service... I want more rebound and less compression damping - but with a single screw you just get a combined mess up of bad compromises.
Had a K1300GT with ESA and it was always wrong (way better than the K1600 but awful)
Comfort - almost right but linked traction control in moped mode, so that suspension mode was in affect unavailable
Sport - harsh wrong damping all the time, but had to be suffered (or you couldn't ride the bike as the power was always off using comfort)
I then has a new 1200GS LC with ESA and that suspension is awful in all five modes, only one allowed the engine to operate (enduro pro) but then the retards turned off the cruise control
I threw that in a skip (where it belonged) and had a KTM 1290 super adventure with WP active shit - and it was utterly useless. Its suspension being wrong in all four modes all the time, every time. Until a software recall ruined the entire bike - alongside killing the suspension which went totally mental - back and forth major KTM dealer couldn't give a toss and two dealers told me the rear shock had failed - I ended up buying a new shock and that didn't work either - 18 months down the road another dealer magically turned on the front damping that had gone completely missing all that time - by resetting some mess up in the rear shock !!! But the software update had removed the once perfect anti wheelie and instead introduced a much slower random can't be bothered mess. If you've ridden a 175 bhp 110 lbs ft short throttle travel badly suspended KTM, with the TC off you'll soon realise as you battle the gravelly, heavily cratered dirt tracks we pretend to call public roads, perfect anti wheelie is rather helpful. Leaving you time to aim the missile roughly where it doesn't want to go... The update left it mostly not accelerating at all, or a random keep you awake idea were about one in ten times it was pointing at the moon before you'd settled in the seat.
To try and stop her screaming and punching me in the kidney's when exercising the KTM, I got a K1600 with semi active ESA, and that suspension is horrific being wrong all the time in all three of its hopeless modes -
rain - the throttle is disconnected and the entire bike becomes a wild pogoing pig
comfort - bounces around out of control, whilst trying to set up some under damped wallowing sea sickness as the traction control interferes
dynamic pro - rattles, shakes and skips around, throwing the beast in the air. And as you try to press on, it's active madness smashes it on to max compression damping, deletes the already dangerously inadequate rebound, and thus it becomes completely unsafe - where regardless of how many bravery badges you think you've earned, bailing out becomes the less terrible option
The next mistake, I got a mint GS Twin Cam with ESA and shockingly its ESA is way better than all the other BMWs by a very long way - but still wrong - it needs some rebound damping but with a single screw mess up - of course that’s out of bounds. And with its disgusting power curve I hate the entire bike more than I hated the KTM - which becomes very confusing when its almost the same thing as my of 2007 1200GS which is brilliant, and probably the best bike I've had...
And one constant theme across ALL those later BMs, the perfect clutch and brake lever design and finish of the 2007 GS has been individually redesigned on each and every later model - till less ergonomic, harder to operate, and far less comfortable to use - some halfwit is destroying their reputation wasting resources to make things worse....
