Honda Africa Twin Front Fork issues and fix with Nitron TVT Cartridge Swap
January 27, 2018 by ridewithbam —Leave a Comment
If you own a Africa Twin you know that this Adventure Motorcycle is one of the top rated bikes on the market. You know that it has many positives, but you also know that one of its short comings is the suspension. The Forks aren’t bad, but they are a little on the soft side. Especially when riding aggressively on rocky or rough terrain. In this article I’ll be discussing some of the issues with the stock forks and why I switched to the Nitron TVT Front Cartridges to upgrade my front suspension.
It didn’t take long for me to start bottoming out the suspension. When riding aggressively off road or in rough terrain I was constantly fully compressing the front suspension. The stock suspension is set up for an average weight of 185lbs and that’s including riding gear, and what ever luggage you might have on a longer tour. This puts most Americans over the max weight for the suspension right off the show room floor. Most people who own and ride an AT do not use it to its full potential. Most use it for touring and fire roads and that’s awesome. If you plan on doing an occasional BDR you’ll probably be ok. Most of the BDRs are for beginner/intermediate riders with the exception of a couple that have expert sections that even skilled riders struggle with. The point here is if you are going to ride the Honda Africa Twin to its full potential, the front suspension needs to be upgraded.
WHY NITRON
As I discussed in my Nitron Rear Shock upgrade post, I didn’t want a band-aide for the front suspension, I wanted something that was going to allow me to grow into the bike. After talking to Alex at Konflict Motorsports it was a no brainer to go with NITRON front cartages as they would be the best balance of performance and budget. I highly recommend Konflict Motorsports . The Nitron TVT front Cartridges are different than the OEM forks. Instead of having to adjust both preload and compression up top and rebound down below, Nitron does like most high quality suspension and makes each leg work independently. The left leg is Compression and the right is Rebound. The legs work with each other and there is huge improvement over the OEM suspension. All adjustments are made from the top of the forks and can be done within seconds.
PERFOMANCE
The front forks feel night and day different. I have yet to bottom the forks out and the preload is only about a third of that I was using before. The bike seems to float of rough roads and pot holes, and even tones down wash board roads to a minimum vibration. When lofting the bike over logs and rocks the bike launches how you want it to and lands with easy. I tell me riding buddy its like I’m floating or riding on a cloud.
HONDA’S KNOWN PROBLEM
Now I will tell you this. After riding the forks for a few thousand miles, I started hearing a clicking sound. I thought this was coming from the Nitron cartridge. After going through it with a fine tooth comb, I couldn’t seem to figure out what was making the noise, so I decided to send my fork over to Konflict the have them check them out. Alex called me a few days later and told me he discovered that the anodizing on the upper inner fork tubes were extremely worn and the sound was the upper and lower fork tubes making contact with each other. This is a known problem with the OEM Showa fork tubes Honda uses and has nothing to do with the Nitron cartridges.
THE FIX
In short, even though my bike was out of warranty, Honda replaced my fork tubes with new ones. Awesome right? Well Honda does not have a fix for the anodizing problem, so the new fork tubes they sent me will develop the same problem if the anodizing issue isn’t fixed. I decided to have the new forks shipped off to get a new “Hard Anodized Coating” put on them. This is a hard military grade coating that shouldn’t wear like the gold anodizing from Showa. Alex from Konflict handled everything for me, even the warranty with Honda. I have had zero problems since getting the forks back and put the suspension to the test on parts of the Nevada BDR recently.
I hope this quick overview helps with any questions you might have with your suspension. Click the video below to show how to install the Nitron Cartridges on your Honda AT, and please, if you have any question or comments, leave it in the comments below.
Topic: Africa Twin Fork issue - Honda SA ... Now what ... (Read 9594 times)
