Ducati Monster Forum

question.....

so with my new bike ima thinking i will be needing a steering damper, my sr21k can be pretty ruff on the hands after awhile....

soooooo what is the difference between the gas and oil dampers?!?! does one really make a difference over the other?!?! what would u guys recommend..i will be doing alot of street(mts,well what little we have here) and long distance (to get to the spankin twisties) riding.....

i have read SomeGirls reviews, but no one has posted in a loooong time so thought i would bring it up again....

thx muchos

The Mousey  [moto]

I don't think a damper will improve the feeling in your hands?  What it will do is keep the front from wobbling under really hard acceleration or high speeds.  For your hands switch up to gloves with more palm padding and practice squeezing a ball during the off season.

More info here: http://ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?topic=7727.0

not exactly what you are asking for but it might give some idea...

Indy Superbikes sells a rotary Scotts damper for $425.95 with free 3 day shipping. It should fit the S2r and S4r but you might wanna call Scotts and double check. In case you don't know, they are basically just like the GPR dampers. Top mounted little box so if you wreck they wont get damaged and theyre no eye sore either!

If you're having pain/discomfort due to vibration in the bars, a steering damper will not help.  For a solution to that, you might look into bar end weights, bar snakes and some other similar products.  Also, have you had the suspension set for you?  IF not, I'd suspect it's too stiff, which will contribute to beating you up a bit through the bars.

As noted, dampers are there to prevent wobble and/or headshake.  If you notice problems with getting some bar wobble during more sevear speed transitions, or hard acceleration, that what a damper's for.

Oil vs. Gas.  Hand waving generality, gas will be better.  Now will most of use press any of the hard enough to notice the difference, probably not.  But, oil when worked hard will suffer from a greater degree of viscosity change if heated.  Also oil can form bubbles if worked hard.  Gas (probably nitrogen) will be less effected by temp changes, and can't really form bubbles. 

Other things to keep in mind.  I've got a Matris damper, one of it's features is that it's speed sensitive.  I can turn it to it's max setting, but I don't need any more effort to turn the bars than it it was set to it's lowest, since my ability to turn the bars are below it's threshold.  But get a high speed wobble going and the damper kicks in. Some dampers do not have this feature and  make it really hard to turn the bars at high damper settings.  I was helping work on a racers bike that had a top mount 'box' sort of damper that all but locked the steering when turned all the way up - of course it broke out into a boy test of strength to see if we could even get it going...

Yuu, how does your damper function in a speed-sensitive fashion? Is it like the ones on CBR's- electronic damper? In other words, is it wired into the speedo or something?

Perhaps I should have been more clear - it's not the speed of the bike that it's sensitive to.  It doesn't have any sort of accelerometer to stuff like that.  Sensitive perhaps isn't the right word, since it's got no sensor.  But it functions like a shock that's got different settings for fast and slow rebound.  IF you move the bars slowly, the piston in the damper moves slowly and the valving doesn't inhibit/damp movement.  But if the bars start moving back and fourth rapidly, the valving kicks in to damp that oscillation.  So it allows you to move the bars without the feeling of pushing on some sort of resistance device.

- That a better description?

the scotts wont work.
the mounting only fits 99-01

they said they might make one (they have one for the hyper)

Yep. Thanks.

A steering damper is always a nice option. If it's adjustable like the Arrow top mount damper you can set it and foget it.  I wouldn't ride my S2R1000 without one.
Pete
Gearitalia