After a bit of examining and pushing down on the forks it was pretty clear what the problem was. It seemed like the rebound damping on my right fork leg was non-existent. Rebound damping is an adjustable bit on the forks which determines how fast, once compressed, the forks come back to the normal position.
The more rebound added the slower the fork returns and the more rebound taken off the faster the forks return. It was as if I had no rebound at all so the front of the bike was just bouncing! No wonder it all felt a bit light! We easily missed 20-minutes of the session by the time we had got the forks out and put my old forks in from two-years-ago, which we didn’t really have much of a clue what settings were inside them but we had to go with it.
I got a few laps in at the end and did a 2min 8.7secs which was good enough for 15th. After the session we found out exactly why the forks were behaving the way they were.
On Wednesday my chassis mechanic took them to be serviced at Öhlins which is done every few races. The factory Öhlins forks for the 250cc have some different cylinders on the front, and to be honest I don’t really know what else is different with them, but they take different shims inside to what my forks do.
When they were serviced at the Öhlins truck the factory shims were put in by mistake which then explained all of our problems. Öhlins apologised for the mistake and I was quite excited after because I did a half decent time on forks that haven’t been touched for two-years and knew that it could be much better with the right shims in my good forks. Also I have to apologise to Dunlop for blaming their tyre in the morning!
