Looking for some advice/help. Picked up my cbr this morning first little ride out it doesn’t feel like there is a damper fitted as steering has no feed back at speed can turn it to easy had a look around the fork area cannot see anything that resembles one. Sorry for what may be a stupid question but this is my second bike still trying to find my way round it. I’ve come from a gsxr600 and the steering had loads of feed back. I can see you can delete them buy why would you. sorry for the long post.
It does have one but it's located to the rear of the top yoke and is almost completely covered by the fuel tank cover. Its an electronic damper so doesn't have fixed damping characteristics, it changes depending on your speed. System is called HESD (Honda electronic Steering Damper) if you want to have a read about it.
Thanks for that I can see the control bar just. Going to have take some bits off to have a look. Is there any way of testing them?
The bike runs it's own self test on the HESD and will report any fault through the PGM-F1 light. You can manually test them to maximum damping for 10 seconds by -Suspending the bike/front wheel off the floor 1-Put the side stand down 2-Put the bike in gear 3-Hold the throttle open fully Then put the ignition on and with all those 3 steps above maintained the damper should be set to maximum. Info taken from the 2014 manual but I don't think the HESD changed for your model year. I can't guarantee that though. Workshop Manual for your bike should be floating round somewhere.
Thanks for that funny enough I just did that test after finding it on line. It does work just not as much as I thought it would. But saying that only got to compair it to my old gsxr and it’s a totally different league of bike I am on now.
It's probably right then. My blade doesn't take any muscling around at any speed, steering always feels light yet stable. Only time I've felt like I'd want more support from the steering damper is going round Oulton Park.
Years ago I had a cbr600rr that didn't have a steering damper so I bought a Sprint one and fitted it, the first time I went out on it I had set it to max and when I went to turn at the end of my street I nearly went straight on into my neighbours drive , I know it's a bit off topic but everytime I think about steering dampers the embarrassment comes flooding back
I had the opposite experience when I test rode a CBR600RR - I’d been used to a fixed steering damper and when I first set off from the dealership on the Honda I oversteered and nearly fell off. Just to add to my embarrassment, I was being watched by a couple of police motorcyclists who were at the dealership testing Fireblades. I’d just been talking with them about advanced riding skills!
