Ricor Intiminators? invisable fork upgrade

Has anyone heard of, or have themselves, Ricor intiminator valves in there commando forks?
I searched Ricor Intiminators in the search, but no topics came up.

I have used these " Intiminators " on my BMW F650GS and they transformed the front end from an unreliable damper rod fork, to much greater performance along the lines of a cartridge fork.
I have emailed Ricor to see if they have any to fit the commando fork. ( waiting for response )
they just sit on top of your damper then you reinstall your spring back on top ( you will gain about 1\2" of preload ) you then use a lighter grade fork oil to bypass your current damper openings, and the Ricor valve takes over your dampening. may be a good upgrade if you have worn dampers.
Best of all, no one will even know there are in your forks.
I will let you know when I get a response from Ricor.

Cheers 8)

Is there a way to flip one to damp in the other direction too?

I meant damper emulators as per the subject line not cartridges. Not a comment on which is better just curious about emulators, one for compression one for rebound so one would be flipped over as supplied. Don't care/want to be one to 1st try to figure out if its doable is all. My SvVee650 has the Race Tech emulators set soft for off road running help with the jarring. Not as good a Peel Roadholders but sure better than Suzuki's low end fork insides.

I converted my BMW airhead forks to Racetech emulators for the track and coupled up with ractech linear springs work well. I looked at Intiminators but I got the impression they were a work around with undrilled damper rods and thinner oil.....might be wrong...can't recall exactly.

I'm thinking of doing the Commando this year but would go for the adjustable Lansdown ones as they look to be a top notch bit of kit. I'd need to find out about springs as I don't like progressive springs.

I am pretty sure the drop in cartridge emulators will not fit in a standard roadholder. Normal forks do not run the top attached damper rod set up like roadholders. The roadholder as standard on the outside of the damper, are similar in look to cartridge forks. Landsdowne is kit I have installed now, and the grin factor is priceless!!

Cheers Richard

There's cartidges that can be fitted in Roadholders, I got a pair to play with. Shouldn't work as well as Lansdowns complete kit. Its not the progressive springs you don't like, its the progressive rate that most complain of in the off the shelf offerings, mostly the brake dive. There are cheap ways to make your own or order up expensive custom set and report on the results.

Nice the lansdowne kit looks great, twice the price of intiminators, but maybe twice the performance.

Hobot,

The emulators you have, how do they fit in there with the damper rod? Or do you remove the damper rod to install them?
I know there was a post on the net of a guy that played around fitting emulators, but I think he concluded they would only work on rebound damping. So he fitted one only to one side and left the other side pretty stock to handle compression damping.
Even though the Landsdowne relies on good old fashioned oil jetting, rather than shim stack technology, it does allow you to play with the rebound and compression rates at will and quite frankly is a huge improvement over stock, and without any clanking.

Cheers Richard

Hey Ho Richard. First off you Must realize my mods to Ms Peel has totally solved all and any handling issues to point I can enjoy off road flings with MX and trail bikes and have fun going 3 ways faster harsher around than even elite modern racers can in ease w/o any athletics involved but fighter pilot breath control. I've tested this in spades against my self on sport bikes and others who were insanely trying to prove my obsolete Cdo wasn't even worth a second sneering at. So with that understanding, which is beyond anything so far described in motorcycle handling I can offer up what little I know about lessor mods to Roadholders, possibly even the excellent hi end wonder of Lansdown kit. Its life an death important to me so no BS much as it seems to be to those who don't yet know what they are missing out on.

There was a post here a couple years back on a cheap cartridge kit so I got them to someday try in Peels forks. But I can't detect any limiting issues on what she's got already, but always interested to try new things as that's how I got Ms Peel to behave so well. I am not current on the install of these as ain't done it yet but its pretty simple to place them as designed, ie: only damping on compression, so don't know yet what it will take to put one in upside down and also not subtract form Peel's 6" travel action. Issues I can envision in fitting one upside down is shortening the damper tube, removing the damper cap, shortening of spring stack length and getting a close fit in the slider to cartridge clearance. I didn't want to be the first to try this as so much opportunity to goof up in my case doing stuff that ain't easy to reverse.

Best I can tell all the other upgrades on Roadholders only involve dampening quality not progressive spring rates nor progressive dampening as I already enjoyed cheap and simple. Also what seems to be fork issues can actually be the whole isolastic system slapping forks silly that no fork mods can help. There are so many things splashing together in un-tamed Cdo's its very hard to isolate the prime source. Witness the posts on new tires solving most if not all the bother un-tamed isloastics can scare you with. I may be the only one to know this as my sloppy tri-links stops All The Splashings of wind and road and pilot inputs, all of them, so I don't have to guess about what's doing what nor slow up but for fear of blind hazards ahead. I don't think any one else will test a bike to the limits in the conditions I do - so after Peel is road going again and money saved up I intend to test the Lansdown kit to know for sure and can easy sell em off if not up to my expectations/requirements. If Lansdown can impress me favorable I'd be standing on roof tops in awe and joy loudly to sell as many for him as I can. Hope they do as rough road joys are my main purpose in life before I'm long gone.

Seems to be a little confusion here. To answer the original question, it's like stockie said. The intiminators aren't made for Roadholder style forks, and you can't fit them without redesigning the whole damping system. Same deal with the Race Tech emulators. There are upgrades like the Landsdowne kit that work with the Roadholder damper rod design, as well as various mods you can make to the Roadholders to improve their performance. If you want really modern cartridge performance from Roadholders, you can fit the cartridge internals from a modern sport bike, or just buy the kit that uses modern Honda internals from Chris Cosentino. http://cosentinoengineering.com/index_files/Page450.htm It's pricey, but really works superbly. It's as good as you can get and still keep the stock Roadholder externals.

Ken

Here is the latest stuff I put in my forks. The seal retainers are Colorado Norton Works with a proper hex to tighten them with. The aluminum cartridges are from Clubman Racing and weigh less than stock. They also have a relocated hole at the bottom (moved to just above the taper) and are supposed to keep the Norton forks from bottoming as hard. $112 for the pair. The longer top bushings are from Clubman as well and they say they keep the fork from "topping out" by covering the hole in the fork tube just before it gets to the top. About $31. I put in 20w50 oil and we will see how it goes.





The springs are Progressive and are about 1/2" longer than some new ones I just got as well as a bit thicker stock. The longer top bushings are pictured next to a pair of stock bushings. Also, the stantions are Andover units. I had bought a set of new ones from a US supplier on eBay and they rusted out without being used!!!

A lot cheaper than the Lansdown set up but I still think I will get that set up someday.

Huh, emulators can't fit? wonder what this is then or wasted my money again.

Hey Hobot, Not Norton forks but BMW, I fitted emulators. I have not had Norton ones apart but the original spring sits on top of the damper rod with spacers supplied with the emulators.
However the spacers were too sloppy so my engineer mate made me some new ones. They go above and below the emulator.
The RH end with the holes goes thru the slider into the fork leg and the emulators sit on the top ( LH) and the spring above that.

I had a look at a Roadholder diagram and I am thinking emulators may not be right for that damper rode type.
To me the damper rod looks to go into the top nut Triumph style???? :?:
On the BMW all the original parts stayed just holes drilled and a PVC spacer fitted above the springs to allow for the emulator thickness.
cheers John

Australian English is damping

ludwig said:

Hobot ,
like Ircen said , these RT valves are not made for Roadholder type forks .
The way you want to install them they will never work : you need oil pressure to open the valve .
If you seal them against the inner stanchion wall , you can make them work for compression damping , but they are not meant to control rebound .
All this has been discussed in great length before .
Look long enough at this drawing and you will understand :

About these Ricor valves :
They seem to have an outer seal against the tube wall . staticmoves can confirm this ?

I found this pic of a dismanteled ricor valve :

Reading trough their sales talk :
"The solution RICOR ultimately arrived at employed a motion-sensing valve to determine whether movement is coming from the chassis or the wheel,..etc.." (quote)

All motion is relative , so I suppose they mean motion relative to the ground .
The valve is part of the unsprung weight , so its position relative to the ground is fixed .
I can understand that it is possible for the valve to ' see' a difference between chassis movement ( sprung weight) and wheel movement caused by road irregularities ( unsprung weight) .
It surprises me though that they can get enough mass in that small thing for a functional inertia valve , submerged in oil , but I'll have to take their word for it .
BUT :
I can imagine some form of human activity in a car that makes the chassis move up and down while the wheels stay still , but on a motorcycle ??
When riding over a road so smooth that the wheels don't move up or down , what on earth can make the chassis move ?.
I would think that all chassis movement is intiated by wheel movement ? .

Ultimately , it is all about metering oil flow , where slow speed flow is likely attributed to chassis movement and fast flow to wheel movement , like when hitting a bump in the road .
The faster oil flow creates more pressure , opening a secondary circuit to soften up the compression damping .
Nothing magical about that .
Progressive damping is always an improvement over fixed orifice damping .
What I don't see how this valve controls rebound damping , or does it rely on a separate circuit like the RT valves ?
Maybe I'll buy a set to find out ..

I suggest that anyone who thinks of installing these valves ( or any other fork upgrade ) to make shure they understand how their forks work .
I mean , not have a vague idea , but know exactly what happens inside the fork .

I am under the impression that the placebo effect is very strong when it comes to forks ..


( ps : question for the native English speakers , is it 'damping ' or ' dampening' ? I see both used ..)

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the major difference i notice with these ricor valves, is when I take the bike off road, no more unstable soft front end. (talking about the BMW ) the slow mushie front end chassie movement, more noticable when riding uneven terrian.
and as for the onroad performance, you don't get the soft fork dive when you hit the front brake, or switch from side to side cornering.

As far as I can tell with life/death testing on/off road, this subject is mere entertainment to me now. My SuVee had dangerous as Roadholder forks before emulators installed and became pretty confidence inspiring and comfortable afterwards. I can see some of the issues of fitting them to our forks. But that ain't the only way to get two way dampening. The more clever ones have made up special valves that replace the Norton ones on end of rod inside damper tube. I think I saved an email of some made 20 yr ago and found a newer version in google images but ain't found it again to inspire others to attempt. Peel had some limitations to tax my fork mods off road but now she's lifted to clear hi center pitching over ravine lips into debrie filled bottoms fast enough she climb out 3+ stories on loose leaves and crust I may want to try adjustable valves on rod end. More as I come across it, if others don't beat me too it.

hobot said:

Huh, emulators can't fit? wonder what this is then or wasted my money again.

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Sorry, Steve, but it think it's "wasted my money again". Like ludwig pointed out, when you remove the damper rod from the Roadholders and just stick the emulator on top of the damper tube, it does nothing but act as a spring spacer. Without the damper rod and piston, there is no pressure to move the oil in and out of the damper tube. The tube just stays full of oil as the forks compress and extend, so there is no damping action.

Ken