Steering Damper's for noobs?

The SV does not need a steering damper, if anyone thinks it does then you should be looking at your riding instead! From smooth and fast to man handling it around the bends, never had a problem on bumpy country roads with standard or modified suspension on either curvy or pointy SV's.

[northwind]

Mine is stood on its nose and high at the back, makes more power and used to be downgeared, and with the stock shock in it slapped like an absolute ba****d. It only ends up like that for a week a year while the Ohlins's getting serviced and I just don't use anything above 2/3 throttle or so. But that's a ludicrious extreme of course, the only time it was ever unstable otherwise was when I made an absolute botch of the damping on the shock. It'll still wag the bars over crests on the power and out of the 1st gear hairpin at knockhill, but there's a big difference between a waggle and a slap. I've considered a 916-style transverse damper on a very low setting, just as insurance, and also because they look ace.

But then, that is not a typical SV, and I could tone it down easily just by shortening the shock- I just like the geometry as it is. If you do find a shortcoming, I'd personally say don't spend money to put a patch on it, spend money to fix the problem.

As others have said, i never thought i needed a damper when i rode my SV. If i was ever going to spend money on it, then it would have been on front end suspension.

I'm hardly in the position to say don't get a damper if you feel you need/want one, as i have one on the R6. Whilst it was pretty well behaved as stock, i do quite like the 'feel' the damper gives to the steering and under hard acceleration.

Not the cheapest mod though at circa £350 new and they are usually in such high demand, that second hand bargains are few and far between.

I'd check the wheel alignment if I were you. Also, if the rear tyre is squared off, any tendency to weave will be magnified as the diameter of the tyre in contact with the ground increases and decreases. (that is probably blx but it seems logical to me lol!)

I'm not a racer, but, I've known a few. Steering dampers were designed to prevent tank slappers induced by ultra hard acceleration, where the front wheel can't spin up fast enough and they start shaking their head, esp on rougher surfaces, but, at speed, even the smoothest can seem rough. 2nd, as a bonus, it can prevent slappers from happening when you come down from a 100mph wheelie, causing the same event, front wheel doesn't spin up fast enough and headshakes occur. Not a likely issue for most people on an SV. So yeah, it can't hurt. You'll never have one so damped that you can't turn the bars quick as you need to. It may give some a good feeling of confidence, so it's not a bad thing. Lots of guys in the US put unwanted stock gixxer dampers on ZRX's etc, they just put in better oil, maybe automatic transmission fluid etc, and call it good.