Bonnie Shocks - Why Are They Considered To Be Bad?

I have to admit that I had never heard of Kayaba/KYB before getting my Bonnie's. Wikipedia claim that they are one of the world's largest suspension manufacturers? I am not really a tinkerer except on visuals as I don't consider myself in any way qualified to know what is and isn't good from an engineering standpoint and generally just take whatever a vehicle has to offer and learn it's idiosyncracies. In my youf I did play around with a lot of things like air filters, jets, exhausts, suspension sprockets etc. etc. based on what others said made improvements but hand on heart I can't honestly say that I ever really and truly noticed any earth shaking difference between before and after.

Maybe I'm just an insensitive big brute (certainly been called that a few times) but I rarely feel the differences others do between set-ups. Strange thing is that I feel that I could get a knee down on the Bonnie if I wanted but, if I tried it on my Sprint I get the feeling I would be in the weeds in the blink of an eye.

 

I think that ergonomics probably does have a lot to do with it. Being fairly tall, trying to hunker down over the tank requires moving my backside over the strap and into what would be pillion territory if I carried such creatures and, even sitting normally I am fairly far back in the saddle so I guess I am probably more over the shocks than the forks. As far as fork dive is concerned I probably don't ever hit my brakes hard enough to cause them to bottom out in normal practice and in emergencies I tend to stomp the rear far more heavily than I do the front. Never locked a front wheel yet and hope I never will.

 

I am a wee bit puzzled by the front brake. I have two 2001's with one of them having been built in 2000 (It was registered in January 2001) and the other which was registered in September 2001. The late 2001 bike has a quite 'progressive' front brake. It does the job but you really need a good handful if you want to stop in a hurry and the caliper is recorded as having had a full re-build last year but the Early built one has a firm front brake that comes on hard from the first squeeze on the lever. Both bikes have exactly the same calipers, discs, master cylinders and hoses so I wonder why they behave so differently.

 

Different pads?

 

I wouldn't have thought so unless the bike had really bad pads and I know the bike with the 'progressive' brakes had new pistons and seals fitted because the brake was felt to be too spongy. I wonder if, perhaps. it could be the hydraulic hose ballooning a bit?

 

The bike with the squidgy brakes has only done just under 8,000 miles where the one with the firm front brake has done 15000. I didn't overhaul the 'squidgy' one myself. It's noted in the bike's history along with the receipts for parts and labour. You would hope that a decent motorcycle mechanic would have sorted it out but, then again, there's a reason that I have always preferred to do the work on my bikes myself.

 

I actually don't mind a 'squishy' brake (I prefer to call it progressive) as I feel it has a much broader and less sensitive range of stopping. You can grab a little or you can grab a handful and you get what you ask for and, as for handling I love the geometry and wheel sizes of the Bonnie. I do genuinely feel very secure throwing a Bonnie into a corner in ways that would scare me on my Triumph Sprint. There is something about the dimensions of the bike and the way my dimensions interact with it that I really 'dig'. On the very twisty and gravelly single track roads around my village I can confidently take my Bonnies up to 70mph before my instinct for self preservation and the risk of something big and boxy coming around the bend travelling in the other direction make me reign it in.