Motorcycles have featured front suspension for over a century, with BMW being the first manufacturer to produce a motorcycle with hydraulically damped telescopic forks in 1935. Currently, a majority of motorcycles use telescopic forks for the front suspension. The telescopic front fork is made of fork bodies, which are the shock absorbers that contain coil springs inside an oil-sealed enclosure, into which the solid fork tubes, or stanchions, slide to provide damping action.
Motorcycle suspension serves dual purposes – contributing to the vehicle’s handling and braking, as well as providing safety and comfort by isolating road noise, bumps and vibration. There have been various iterations of two-wheeler front suspension over the years, from Telelever and Duolever forks (used by BMW), right up to single-sided front set-up and front swingarms with hubcentre steering. However, telescopic suspension systems have survived the longest, and seem to be the most practical solution for motorcycle front suspension system.
Within telescopic front suspension systems, the traditional setup was with the stanchions being mounted to the top, and the fork bodies at the axle. But starting in the 1980s, motorcycle racing teams changed the orientation of the front fork by inverting it, resulting in the ‘UpsideDown Fork’ or the ‘Inverted Fork.’ In this setup, the bigger, fork bodies are mounted to the triple clamp and the stanchions are at the bottom, clamping on to the front axle. The inside of USD front forks, however, is almost exactly similar to that of traditional telescopic suspension. Each fork body is essentially made up of a piston, valves, cylinder and side pipe.
THE USD DIFFERENCE
The unsprung weight (wheels and part of the suspension itself) on a motorcycle negatively affects its handling capabilities. Turning of the handlebar creates a large amount of twisting pressure on the point at which the suspension system is fitted on the triple clamp. The dimensions of the fork, including the stanchions and the fork bodies, are designed to ensure that the amount of force that can be handled. The setup of USD forks results in lower unsprung weight on a motorcycle, since the lighter components of the suspension are placed at the bottom.
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