Ohlins USA tour

In10SS

Donating Member
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I had a neat experience yesterday and thought I'd share it. I have a BMW M roadster and over on ZPost they've been trying to get Ohlins to build a coil over kit for our cars. I volunteered to be the Guinea pig for measurement and trial fitting. When trading emails with the engineer who is working on this I mentioned I've had several of their shocks on my bikes. So while they had my car for the day, they loaned me a BMW GS1200 with their full suspension on it. Everyone there was very nice and I felt like a VIP. I had a personal tour of the entire site by an engineer and got to literally wander around and talk to anyone and everyone. Looked in on the rebuild and testing area where they were working on an indy car suspension, saw millions in inventory, walked through the parts area where they could build anything. One guy spent 20 minutes explaining how they developed the BMW suspension and also their full kit for touring HDs. Another guy mapped out and printed a 3.5 hour test loop and gave me the keys to the bike.
The riding experience was something. This bike had the smoothest front suspension and would soak up bumps when leaned over like they weren't even there. It dropped into a curve so smoothly it was addictive. The GS was high with lots of suspension travel, but once onboard you forgot you were on a bike that could also go up a fire trail. There was a little bit of jacking of the rear from the shaft drive when off and on the throttle. Hard acceleration would remind you of how much suspension travel there was as the front came up, but I had a blast. Also cool that the electronic suspension adjustments all still worked. It would have been perfect if I could of missed that pesky rain cloud! The car kit is too track oriented for my use, but I loved the tour!
 
Those m roadsters are sweet cars. Would be fun to check out the site. Did they get a suspension bolted up on your car?
 
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