My 2017 Beta Suspension Lessons Learned

[mknutson]

I've got one of the new 2018 300rr machines. The Beta brand is new to me, coming off a whole string of KTM's and CRF-X's.
So far the forks seem OK and are doing the job, but the rear is almost totally unrideable as it is stock! Can you say Harley hardtail. Thats what it feels like sitting down. The rear kicks and bucks on every rock, root, etc., and I put a soft tire on the back, (shinko 505 cheater), which has worked well on my KTM 500exc.
Have to dive into the shock to tweak the valving a bit and maybe go lighter on the oil viscosity.
The spring rates are what the book calls for for me with gear on ready to ride.
The sag numbers look pretty good in the rear, but the shock wont take up any of the small stuff, but feels fine on bigger hits on the trails.
The clickers are set to full soft on the high speed and almost soft on the low speed. Don't really want to waste more money on springs yet till I look at the shock internals.

Mark.

[katoom400]

I've got one of the new 2018 300rr machines. The Beta brand is new to me, coming off a whole string of KTM's and CRF-X's.
So far the forks seem OK and are doing the job, but the rear is almost totally unrideable as it is stock! Can you say Harley hardtail. Thats what it feels like sitting down. The rear kicks and bucks on every rock, root, etc., and I put a soft tire on the back, (shinko 505 cheater), which has worked well on my KTM 500exc.
Have to dive into the shock to tweak the valving a bit and maybe go lighter on the oil viscosity.
The spring rates are what the book calls for for me with gear on ready to ride.
The sag numbers look pretty good in the rear, but the shock wont take up any of the small stuff, but feels fine on bigger hits on the trails.
The clickers are set to full soft on the high speed and almost soft on the low speed. Don't really want to waste more money on springs yet till I look at the shock internals.

Mark.

The book is notoriously wrong on the the spring rates, what do you weigh in gear and what spring is on there now? also what are your current sag numbers?

My reworked 14 and 15 shocks are both way better than stock, but I would never have called the stock valving unrideable. and I'm in very rocky terrain.

[moto367]

Had the chance to break my 2017 RE in this past weekend at a local enduro. Things were very stiff obviously but did begin to loosen up. I went 2 out on the compression front and rear and that helped. What surprises me is I'm now at 19 out on the forks with 20 available. They performed ok but are still harsh on the small choppy stuff (rocks, tree roots). I'll continue to let them work in a while longer but I suspect some internal changes to get the clickers more in the middle of the range. We'll see... Sag numbers are where they should be for my weight (165 lbs).

[mknutson]

Currently I'm 250 ready to ride. The springs I went up to are .50 in the forks, and 6.0 on the shock.
The sag numbers are pretty good at 35 and 110.
Calling it unrideable may be a stretch, but it's not nice to ride, wears you out after 20 miles of trails.
The front end is fine as is, just the rear needs some help.
The rear works fine on the big stuff like trail whoops and water bars, it's the smaller junk it won't move much for.
I will make this bike work because it fits me good and it's a nice machine.

Mark.

[katoom400]

Currently I'm 250 ready to ride. The springs I went up to are .50 in the forks, and 6.0 on the shock.
The sag numbers are pretty good at 35 and 110.
Calling it unrideable may be a stretch, but it's not nice to ride, wears you out after 20 miles of trails.
The front end is fine as is, just the rear needs some help.
The rear works fine on the big stuff like trail whoops and water bars, it's the smaller junk it won't move much for.
I will make this bike work because it fits me good and it's a nice machine.

Mark.

I'm about 230lbs geared up and I'm running 46's on KYB forks, with a 5.6 in the rear with ~33/100 on the sag using 10mm preload. 35 static is in range, but 110 is way too much on this bike. I would try to get that closer to 30/100 with no more than 10mm preload.

I would also say that my tuner made a world of difference on my shock. It was originally done by him but for the orginal owner of the bike and I thought it wasn't as good as my 2014 done by the same tuner (WER) I called him and he said it was in fact setup very different for that owner than what he did for my 2014, so off it went. Once I got it back it was a HUGE difference in small bump "compliance"

[dirtbird]

I've got one of the new 2018 300rr machines. The Beta brand is new to me, coming off a whole string of KTM's and CRF-X's.
So far the forks seem OK and are doing the job, but the rear is almost totally unrideable as it is stock! Can you say Harley hardtail. Thats what it feels like sitting down. The rear kicks and bucks on every rock, root, etc., and I put a soft tire on the back, (shinko 505 cheater), which has worked well on my KTM 500exc.
Have to dive into the shock to tweak the valving a bit and maybe go lighter on the oil viscosity.
The spring rates are what the book calls for for me with gear on ready to ride.
The sag numbers look pretty good in the rear, but the shock wont take up any of the small stuff, but feels fine on bigger hits on the trails.
The clickers are set to full soft on the high speed and almost soft on the low speed. Don't really want to waste more money on springs yet till I look at the shock internals.

Mark.

You need to break in your rear shock (it takes up to 10 hours) in parallel with your seat foam (it takes much more if it ever does).
I suggest to replace it with a softer foam.
I had great results with Guts racing tall soft but i have to change the shape with a rasp since it is about 3cm taller than std and fatter at the sides
I needed taller but not that much.
Take care of your seat first and then you decide if you need to ro something with your shock setup.

Also 100mm sag never worked for me and generally it doesn't work in Betas, at least in Europe.
Try 110 to see if you like it.

[mknutson]

The tall soft seat foam will help quite a bit, looking into that now too.
With the 6.0 rear spring the sag #'s are 35ish to 110 with 10+ mm of preload.
I'd like to get it to ride smooth like an old XR Honda, you can ride them all day without getting beat up.
One of our local tuners told me if he had a dime for every time someone said, "Make it ride like an XR", he could have retired long ago!
ENDURO bikes, as this one is marketed as shouldn't ride like a supercross bike! No need for monster g-outs, or landing off triples here.
I'll get it done one way or another cause I like the bike overall.

[katoom400]

The tall soft seat foam will help quite a bit, looking into that now too.
With the 6.0 rear spring the sag #'s are 35ish to 110 with 10+ mm of preload.
I'd like to get it to ride smooth like an old XR Honda, you can ride them all day without getting beat up.
One of our local tuners told me if he had a dime for every time someone said, "Make it ride like an XR", he could have retired long ago!
ENDURO bikes, as this one is marketed as shouldn't ride like a supercross bike! No need for monster g-outs, or landing off triples here.
I'll get it done one way or another cause I like the bike overall.

I think it's the age old problem of East Vs. West when manufacturers setup a bike for the USA. Mostly all of their testing was done in CA, and even the EXC/XCW bikes came valved stiff for eastern conditions since all of the testing was done in much faster conditions. This has gotten better over the years, but I still think they shoot for the middle ground. and if that's where your terrain/trails falls you will be pretty happy out of the box.

for me and my ignorant tight goat trails, I've never had a bike work great out of the box. I always go for plush-o-matic, so I just have WER revalve every bike.

If you want XR plush give Drew Smith at WER a call

[mknutson]

I'm up here in western washington where we too have ignorant tight goat trails like back east.
Every single KTM I've owned, and theres been a bunch, have had to be reworked to make rideable.
I'll get this thing worked out if it kills me.
The next addition to the bike is the auto clutch, (which they don't have made up yet, but it's in the testing phase), and the left hand rear brake.

Mark.

[aj_mariner]

I'm up here in western washington where we too have ignorant tight goat trails like back east.
Every single KTM I've owned, and theres been a bunch, have had to be reworked to make rideable.
I'll get this thing worked out if it kills me.
The next addition to the bike is the auto clutch, (which they don't have made up yet, but it's in the testing phase), and the left hand rear brake.

Mark.

Whereabouts in WW? I'm up in Glacier by Mt Baker. You hit up any of the NMA Enduro events this year?