A quick and dirty rule in navigation is that a one degree change in course will result in a one mile difference in 60 miles.

Since a motorcycle has a 60" wheelbase the calculation is easy.

Yep....when I installed the RM400 triple trees it pulled the fork tubes back about 1.5 inches, and got me to almost 5" of trail.  MMRanch rode the bike once at the Dragon, and he said at the first turn he came to it felt like he "was trying to bend a board"!  Since then I went back to a stock offset and the bike feels much more nimble.  Using the level on my cell phone I measured 28 degrees - but it may not be all that accurate.  RYCA claims something like 29 degrees for their Cafe bike.

Here is a previous discussion link:
http://suzukisavage.com/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1424120242

justin_o_guy2 wrote on 01/24/16 at 09:28:54:



I went back, looked at the pictures.
The Swoop at the bottom of the fork was less, and the distance appeared to be less in the picture, yet the words accompanying the picture state
Decreased fork offset, increased trail,
And that is counterintuitive and seems to conflict with the picture.

verslagen1 wrote on 01/24/16 at 09:42:34:


Then my numbers are off.  

look at the pic on the first page. By moving the wheel center forward with a curved fork, you're decreasing the trail. The imaginary line drawn through the steering axis doesn't change.

That works, thank you very much.

nothing like experience jog

you gotta pipe bender?

make up a test bike.

I THINK trail determines how hard you have to pull/push the bars to turn.

I know the rake angle determines how fast the front end responds to rider inputs. If you're forks are too vertical the bike becomes "twitchy" and unstable. If you like the really raked look you're sacrificing handling for the "cool" factor. Somewhere in between is a good compromise.