Raising the ride even further

I recently fitted some D&D Lowcats to the Fatboy and even though they are up-swept they can touch down a little on very tight turns like a roundabout. So I've raised the ride height a tad and also re-located a couple of the heat shield clips. In fact as I write this I am wondering whether the clips touching down could have caused the pipe to touch-down. Must get out and test that theory out now that they are already scratched up! Still lovin the Fournales though.

Perfect balance

I've now done approximately 8,500km on the fournales and they are well and truly run in. I haven't adjusted them since the last time, so the rear is sitting at about 10mm lower than stock. Hammered up to Toodyay and back today and the bike was planted. Just waiting to have the forward controls fitted this week and I will be truly happy. (until the next mod fever). Still thoroughly recommend fournales to anyone looking for a firm ride that won't bottom out on WA's shitty roads.

3500km...Down again by 10mm!

Now I think we have the perfect balance between show and go for the fournales! The bike rides firmer with no wallow and doesn't swat under hard acceleration and the bike doesn't look so jacked up at the back. Hopefully it will still feel like this the next outing (in the morning to the breakfast club). Pic soon.

First we went down..by 20mm

So I dropped the back by 20mm, approximately 10-15mm lower than the stock suspension. This felt fine in the city but I noticed that on the next long ride in the country the bike felt less settled, and the rear wallowed for the first time since fitting the fournales.

Waiting for a raise (or lowering!)

Now 2,000km on the bike is handling better and better. I've re-fitted the LePera King Cobra seat again. The seat's a lot firmer but you feel a lot more connected to the road. The Brawler seat has a lot more padding but somehow isn't as comfortable because of its shape.

I'm waiting for the Fournales pump to arrive at Thundertech so that I can get the rear lowered a little. I'm reliably informed that this won't affect the performance. I would buy the pump but apparently it is really, really expensive.

1500km or near as dammit

So the run in is over. Going to get the chaps at Thundertech to lower the ride height a tad. No real revelations in the remaining run in period other than to re-affirm that the bike handles better than ever. I feel a lot more confident powering out of corners knowing I have the best possible contact with the road.

2008 Satin black HD Fatboy

Fournales Pan Cruise fitted

The Great Northern Highway

There is nothing great about Perth's Great Northern Hway. I thought the Lancelin road was bad but at least that has the excuse that it's not a main artery of the state. The GNH has such a rough uneven and generally bumpy surface that it makes for a very unpleasant ride, even with a set of fournales that are close to being broken in (1250km so far). In addition to being rutted and uneven, littered with unfinished surfaces and bereft of white lines it has a general smearing of diesel from the roadtrains that hammer up and down it. It may be acceptable for rodadtrains but there is a heap of traffic that use the road besides those monsters so come on Main Roads WA - sort it out! While you're at it some decent overtaking lanes that don't start or end on a bloody bend would be good. Riding a motorcycle in those conditions, even one with fournales shocks is a white knuckle experience.

U-Turns

When I said that the fournales shocks improved low speed handling I didn't realise that that also meant very slow speed. I've noticed over the last week or so that executing a U-turn on the fatboy has become much easier, smoother, since fitting the shocks. Very welcome benefit!

Freeway riding with Fournales

I ride about 20km each way when I ride to work. Now most days I head into work along the Wanneroo road, a normal dual carriageway for most of the route but fairly low speed. On the way home though I'll take the freeway. One thing I found previous to installing the fournales was that the joins in the freeway where they bridge other roads can cause some pretty serious jarring, coming close to bottoming out the rear and causing a little instability. Now with the fournales, even though they are still running in, those bumps are a lot less sharp and the bike feels completely straight even when hitting the worst ridges.

Almost halfway too 1500km break-in

So are the fournales lumbering up? Yes I believe they are, although still the wrong side of firm. Headed north today and found this weird structure in the middle of the bush. A 13 storey metal platform called imaginatively "the leaning tower of gingin". Anyway that terrible road is getting more bearable as the fournales gradually break-in. Whilst it gets a little dull I can at least have a good comparison of the shocks performance.

Leaning tower of gingin

Ride height, Fournales compressor?

As I pass the 500km mark with my new fournales I can't help think that this product would be even bigger in AU and elsewhere I'd it was easier to find out more about the product.

I'm really looking forward to being able to drop the ride height slightly once they are run in. Rumour has it that there is a compressor that can be fitted to change the ride height dynamically! Where you'd put it on a fatboy is entirely a different matter.

Message to Fournales Australia

As I pass the 500km mark with my new fournales I can't help think that this product would be even bigger in AU and elsewhere I'd it was easier to find out more about the product. Bernard or Fournales, how about you send me some decent pics and specs and I will post them here.

To work and back...

So my short (20km) journey to work in Perth told me virtually nothing about my new Fournales shocks but frankly I wasn't really concentrating! The roads are pretty smooth so very little for the fournales to deal with but its another 40km on the break-in. The only thing I noticed was on the freeway home the cats eyes in the road were a little less intrusive when lane splitting.

NB: Update: Since I have change the tyres to the Dunlop 407 rear again rather than the 407 the freeway ride has improved so I think the shocks were only partly responsible.

Why write about Fournales shocks?

These days it is normally very easy to find information about a product or service you are considering, or at least you'd think so! I recently decided to change the rear shocks on my 2008 Harley Fatboy, at approx 30,000km. The OEM versions where still perfectly functional but they really were giving my spine a run for its money on Western Australia's heavily potholed country roads, which combined with a tendency to skip over uneven surfaces also had dented my confidence in the roadholding of the bike. I had already put progressive springs and 20W oil in the front forks.

Anyway I had come across a number of glowing mentions of Fournales shocks previously when browsing the HD forums so I decided to dig a little deeper. Unfortunately though any detailed information was actually a little hard to come by and the official website is a. In French and b. just a basic catalogue.

The forums were littered with people that mentioned Fournales briefly but nothing that could really help a person make an informed decision (these things cost around $1700 AUD for the Softail version, albeit they do have a genuine money back guarantee).

So this blog is my attempt to document my ownership experience with the Fournales shocks (Pan Cruise versions for Softail) in the hope of helping some other blokes trying to make up their mind. Think of this site as a long term test, as you might get in a magazine. Had I thought of this earlier I would have got a picture of them in the box but here is a product shot of a similar model unfitted (not identical to mine).

Here they are on the bike...

Red dirt meets Fournales

The road above is pretty typical of the roads that run all around WA. This is in fact the Old Yanchep road. I headed out to Gingin which is about 85km north of Perth, Western Australia.


View Larger Map

The Wanneroo road north of Wanneroo before the turnoff to Gingin is possibly the worst surface I have ridden in WA in terms of the number and severity of the hidden holes/bumps in the road. My impressions of the Fournales was that they were fairing slightly better but still the road was terrible but at least the edge was taken off it (not sure that was enough to justify the cost of these things though). However I kept telling myself I had only done a fraction of the 1500km break-in mileage.

The first big surprise with the Fournales though was just around the corner (literally). On the Gingin Brook road that runs between the Wanneroo road and Gingin there was a large section of road re-surfacing and the road was completely red gravel/dirt for about 2km. This red dirt riding fills me with dread on the Fatboy, the rear is normally squirming the hole way and I have to creep along ready to throw a foot down. So imagine my surprise when I hit the gravel/dirt and the bike felt totally steady and in control!! Way to go Fournales!! I kept up to the posted speed limit of 60km/h no problem and felt completely secure. This was an unexpected benefit that I was delighted to discover as I often come across red dirt when out exploring and previously I would just turn around unless it was very short or on a road I knew.

Finally on the way home I was about 50km out of Perth on the Wanneroo road and I hit this very rough section of road which is on a gentle curve that enters a tighter curve, and which was so crashy last time I rode it that I swore several times out loud as I struggled to maintain control of the bike. Anyway I had forgotten about his patch until I was well and truly in the middle of it but the experience this time was far more controlled even though there were still some pretty big bumps. So this chalk up another one to the Fournales after less than 200km.

More WA country roads

Racked up another couple of hundred kilometres today in attempt to get the Fournales broken in as quickly as possible. Again the roads were the usual rough and ready WA specials, this time out to Yanchep then across to Bullsbrook and back into Perth along. Gnangara road.

I made a point today of trying to ride the roughest parts of the road, and what I noticed was the very rough (but not necessarily heavily bumpy) bits had very little effect on the ride. The Fournales 'glide' over the rough road without translating that roughness through to you derriere. This is helpful when the road surfaces are generally less than ideal and gives you more confidence in the corners, although get your line wrong and they won't save you!! (I said confidence not over-confident!)

So with 400km or so done the ride does appear to be getting better and I am back to work this week and will run up an extra few hundred km before the weekend. The 1500km run in period will be done in less than 2 weeks at this rate.

The Briefing!

So I picked up the bike with the Fournales fitted on Saturday. They look great, such a shame they are hidden underneath the bike!

The shocks were sourced by Thundertech in Mundaring (WA) who now service my bike (thoroughly recommend them).

They've obviously spent some time talking to the local distributor (that Bernard the Frog bloke) to get the low down. The shocks are set up for riders from 80kg to 130kg as standard so no need to adjust from stock. The shocks use a gas chamber (nitrogen in this case) and an oil chamber rather than a spring.

I have a translated page from the Fournales.fr website here which explains the technology:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffournales.fr%2Fpresentation%2Fconcept-technique%2F

There is apparently a 1500km break in period so I'm keen to rack up the km! Here are some more pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/46951921@N07/

First impressions of the Fournales

The first thing you notice when you sit on the bike is that their is virtually no 'sag'. The bike stays very firm underneath you. The creaking sound, which was obviously the other setup, that had started to bug me had also gone! Dean, the owner at Thundertech said that on the test ride he'd immediately noticed that it handled better in slow turns (I guess he was waiting for me to do the speed test!)

Now I like firm suspension so I was delighted that the bike felt very firm, and as I set out into Mundaring it felt rock steady, with no perceptible compressing on acceleration either . I turned off the great eastern highway towards Parkerville to see how it went on some lumpier bitumen!

My first impressions on the side roads were that although the bike felt slightly more planted the actual 'seat of the pants' ride wasn't a lot different. The big holes still felt pretty big, albeit not as crashy (sorry not a great descriptor). So I rode the 40km home feeling a little underwhelmed at my expensive purchase. However I had spent less than 40 mins in the saddle so I resolved to give it a longer run the next day.