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2008 Triumph Street Triple Full Review

Posted by Kenn Stamp
Friday, 04 January 2008
Page 2 of 5 Having this bike for a month really allowed me to get a good feel for it as I could use it like I would if I owned it. I am a big proponent of having bikes "long-term" compared to only having the bike for a week. Sometimes the manufacturers can be accommodating and everything works out great, and this was one of those times. I knew going into this, that Triumph had "skimped" on the Street's suspension in an effort to keep the cost down, so I was expecting some less than stellar performance in the ride department. During the first and second week I had the bike the suspension drove me nuts. High speed compression was way off causing expansion joints and hard edged bumps to transmit a sizable shock through the bars and up my arms. By the second week I was ready to write about how badly Triumph missed the boat by putting non-adjustable front suspension on the bike. In the interest of accurate and fair reporting I decided to get a second opinion about what I felt was a big blunder on Triumph's part. It just so happened that during a Sunday ride with my local group one of the other riders and I had to break-off early for other commitments. We also happened to be heading the same way back so at the first stop sign I looked at him and he looked at me and that was all it took. This other rider is a very good rider who knows bikes and puts a lot of mileage on them, so I felt confident that he would give me an honest answer. He did, but not the answer that I was expecting. "The suspension is set-up pretty well" was one of the first things he said when he got off the bike. Hmmm....Really? I had just ridden his VFR for all of 20 miles and it, being the first VFR I had ever ridden, had me smitten with it's solid ride and unflappable handling, not to mention that beautiful sound from the exhaust (think Ferrari V8). Now I'm being told that the person who owns this tight, well suspended piece of engineering actually thought the Street's suspension was "set-up pretty well"? Something was obviously wrong with this so after swapping bikes again I set out to find out what it was (postponing my other commitment in the process). After numerous attacks on one particularly nice corner and repeated runs over some not so nice stretches of concrete, I figured out the issue: me. I realized that I was gripping the bars just a hair too tightly. Not only was the suspension fighting the bumps in the road but it was also fighting me. Now before you say "what a bonehead", understand that we are not talking about me having a death-grip on the bars, just a tad more grip than the bike actually liked. Once I adjusted that I no longer felt like the bike was wallowing in the corners nor trying to be a mechanical bull over rough roads. All better then right? Well, not exactly. You see, the bike still would benefit greatly from a fully adjustable suspension; it's just that adjusting the riding style took it from near the middle of my "fun-to-ride/own" list and moved it closer to the top. Hopefully Triumph will add adjustable suspension to the '09 models as it still is a weak point and the possible cost savings cannot possibly outweigh the loss of adjustability. While we are on the subject of handling let's talk about the tires. From the factory the bike comes with Dunlop Qualifiers, which are pretty good tires. However, I wasn't a big fan of them on this bike. I'm not sure if it was the profile or the compound or what, but the bike felt like it wanted to fall into corners. I didn't feel this on the VFR I rode with the same tires so it is almost certainly a tire/bike combo issue. There was no grip issues at any lean angle but I can foresee many owners going aftermarket to find a set that fits them better. << Start < Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next > End >>

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