Triumph Tiger 1050 Suspension Tuning

Your big soft Tiger could use more bite. With some tuning they can stop feeling bouncy, furry and floaty and turn into something more balanced & solid.

The Triumph Tiger 1050 is great for Australian roads, the 150mm of travel and upright riding position help you to enjoy some of the twisties in places like the Oxley Highway and the Putty Road, just north of Sydney.

Once pushed just a little bit, the forks and shock can't keep up with the rest of the bike though. Our suspension dyno testing shows where the suspension is lacking, and it's the dampening. That super soft plushness feels nice on the showroom floor, but means you never quite feel planted, or know how much grip is under either tyre.

Triumph Tiger 1050 Forks


Ahead of their time, the 43mm Showa front forks have rebound in one leg, compression the other. The stock forks are very lightly dampened initially, resulting in brake dive and a general busy feel to the fork, not confidence inspiring. We replace the stock internals, pistons & valves with our own Teknik developed parts and then check the results on the suspension dyno before and after. The difference is night and day.

Compounding things are the stock springs: just 0.60kg/mm, which is very light by any standard. We usually fit springs in the 0.80 to 0.90 range with appropriate preload.

Triumph Tiger 1050 Shock


Honestly, the 46mm Showa is quite a good shock absorber. The spring rate is good for riders around 85kg and the preload adjuster is nice, the rebound adjuster is all most riders need. What it lacks is set-up. There is so little dampening it feels like the shock isn't even working.

This can be rectified when we rebuild the shock. We can change the rate of the coil spring to suit your riding and weight with HiCalibre's 20-048 Series Shock Springs. Although it was designed to be thrown away and replaced, we are actually capable of turning your rear shock absorber into a rebuildable unit as we go, modifying the body casing and internals so that it can be rebuilt much easier and quicker (and cheaper) in the future.

As you can see from the dyno graph above, just adding some solid damping to the stock Showa coilover can make a world of difference. When we do a revalve, we add strong, linear, continued damping all the way through the stroke (in Red), whereas the stock damping rolls over and dies almost immediately (top half of the blue line).

Your other option is to replace the whole lot with a completely adjustable Yacugar or TFX replacement rear shock. Whichever you choose, it is built to your specifications and will provide much better performance.