All the quality of Harley Davidson suspension for the price of Ohlins?! Well, I'm sold!

 

Never used them but heard of them and I know of others using them on their race bikes. They make some pretty kickass shocks, and I think forks as well. Never heard of them being used on Harleys, only seen track day riders and racers using them, but they're not as common. Who does your suspension? What area are you from? I believe Velocity Calibrations in St. Louis, MO specializes in Bitubo (among other brands).

 

I'm in St. Peters, MO. Eric at Velocity is who does my suspension work.

I just thought it was odd that he never mentioned Ohlins as an option. So I figured there must be a big price difference. Then when I looked it up I saw the prices were similar.

He seemed really impressed with Bitubo's stuff. But I still wanted to get some opinions from people that have used it on the R3.

 

I've never met him since I'm a bit too far but I've heard only great things about Eric and Velocity Calibrations. I would trust his judgement on suspensions for sure.

I've been doing a lot of research on this topic lately and just pulled the trigger last night on some parts. I was dead set on going with Ohlins but from talking to other more experienced people and faster people who have been racing and testing various parts on the R3's, it sounds like the Ohlins is really not the best option for this bike. I think Jesse Norton from Norton Fab (where I bought my stuff from) has some pretty good write-ups on suspensions and other parts for the R3. The Ohlins shock and cartridges are not really made for racing. They're made to be a solid improvement over stock but nothing too great for track riding.

The Ohlins shock is actually one of the cheaper options for this bike, and by the sound of it, it's not suitable for people over 140-150 lbs. Rebound damping is too weak so they put a soft spring on it. If you go with a stiffer spring you risk overcoming the rebound capabilities. It's also not long enough. I don't know much about the cartridges though.

Unfortunately I don't know much about Bitubo relative to this bike as I've never heard of anyone running them on R3's and I didn't even know they make parts for the R3. I also recently found out that Mupo makes cartridges and shocks for the R3 as well, which I never thought to check. Both are Italian so you know they're not cheap, but generally good. Sometimes it's hard to really know what the best is because different brands dominate different markets. For all we know maybe brands like Bitubo and Mupo are very popular in Europe, much like K-tech, but not so much here. Whereas I wouldn't be surprised if barely anyone there has heard of RaceTech, Penske, JRi or Traxxion Dynamics, which are very popular in the US.

I say go with Bitubo and let us know how you like it