What's wrong with the Beta Xtrainer's suspension? Nothing. It's made by Olle, a Spanish company with a long history in trials suspension. So the Xtrainer's suspension has a strong trials influence in terms of its spring weight, valving and light weight design. And of course it costs less, it's a large part of why the Xtrainer runs at around $1000 cheaper than the RR300. Not good of course, but not hopeless. And Ben Hemingway rode a stock Xtrainer to 8th place in Hells Gate, the Italian extreme enduro. But of course many of us are over the 80kg weight they design most dirt bikes for, and we want to occasionally ride faster. So let's look at some options. At low speed it's just as good, on big hits it's almost as good but I suspect the inch less of suspension travel might be the issue there. On our last ride the other two were riding RR300s and we all swapped over they agreed. Particularly my brother who has ridden the Xtrainer with the previous suspension mods and said "It's not trying to kill me anymore!" Apparently my setup is almost identical to the setup they did for Ben Grabham's Xtrainer when he came 8th in Australia'a hard enduro, Wildwood Rock. Drain the standard 5W fork oil and refill with 500ml of 15W fork oil. Wind the rebound in (this also increases the compression damping) and put some preload on the spring in the righthand leg. On the rear, play around with the damping but our suspension guru recommended not maxxing out the compression damping, as you could wind up damaging the piston on really big hits. Then see if you need to go for stiffer springs or not. A cheap fix which some riders find acceptable. Next is playing with the shims in the forks. Plenty of riders find this acceptable or at least better than heavier fork oil, but there's still the inevitable trade off with losing that plush feel as you beef things up to cope with faster riding. To experiment with this, our local suspension gurus did a basic revalve on my Xtrainer forks. Was it better? For faster riding yes but it lost that supple feel for slower riding. I was puzzled as normally FFC can work magic but they explained revalving won't overcome one critical issue - more on that later. There are other cartridge kits like the Andreani X-Trainer Fork cartridge Kit but at AUD$1000 or around US$800 I reckon that's getting bloody expensive. It brings the Xtrainer up to the same cost as a RR300 before you even look at the rear shock. So what about revalving the rear shock? To experiment with this, our guys did a basic revalve on the shock. But of course many enduro riders love the light weight but want the bike to handle faster agressive riding too, so they start complaining about the suspension. It's a similar issue the KTM Freeride has faced over the years. Everyone loves a chart, here's one we cooked up earlier. If you aren't too heavy, the stock setup is great for slow technical riding and trials type tricks, and Trevor Campbell even gave the Xtrainer a belt around the motocross track and was surprised the stock suspenders weren't too bad. I noticed some improvement but not much. I'll explain why next. Our mob use their dyno to precisely when and where suspension isn't doing what the rider wants it to, and James their head suspension tuner quickly spotted that the relationship between compression and damping were very similar, as they normally are in trials suspension. Whereas an enduro setup has a lot more compression damping than rebound. And the dyno charts revealed that the existing suspension mods can only get around this to a certain extent. On the rear shock, they designed a custom piston to get the right balance. They modified the cartridge kit he was using to get the same setup and apparently Ben loved it, and didn't even adjust the compression damping that came with the kit. Is there an ultimate suspension setup for the Xtrainer? For me this would have to now be close. Sure you could adapt suspension from another bike or get aftermarket forks and shock, but it will cost a fortune and make the Xtrainer heavier. But as always don't take my word for it, do your own research and see what others say. And then modified the stock fork internals along with different shim stacks for the same reason. They explained what they were doing to the forks. Ready to spend some money? Beta have the BPS-K9 cartridge kit for $640. (US$385 but no spring included). I've read some reviews and quite a few riders like this solution.
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