TOBY STEERING DAMPER

by Dino

I am three meetings into the race season now, and with a good 25 hours of race pace track time under my belt I feel I am now qualified to assess the Toby steering damper supplied to me by Mat Mladin Imports.

My first impression was that it looked seriously trick. Especially in the red. They do come in many other colours so you can match them to your bike's colour for that factory look!

The quality is there from when you first take it out of the box. It feels substantial and well engineered.

The fitments are well made and easy to slot into place with a minimum of that infamous knowhow that can get us in so much trouble.

I had an extra challenge as I had to mate a GSX-R one to the BIKE ME! Triumph 675 race bike. I had grafted a Gixxer front end to the Triumph. Fitting the damper was an easy job with the high quality fittings provided. I just had to fashion up a small block of alloy to fit between the Triumph's tank and head stock, and then it fitted just like a bought one.

So test time came around nice and quickly and the first meeting was at Broadford Raceway in Victoria.

Now for those of you who haven't had the pleasure of fanging round this tricky little track I shall try to explain the reason a good steering damper is essential to go fast. Those of you who have gone fast round this track will no doubt know what I mean by this.

On the back straight just out of turn two there is a small off camber crest right at your gear change point. At this point your bike gets very unsettled and has claimed many unaware riders in the past. I was very close to crashing there myself in the '04 season when my Triumph TT600 got into an almighty tank slapper that lasted three quarters of the straight and left me with sore arms from the fight with the bars.

Two years later a fellow BEARS member crashed horribly there on his KTM Super Duke and spent many months in hospital; and yes, neither he nor I were using a steering damper at the time.

Dino heads out to do battle with the Creek

This time with the Toby steering damper set up to medium I just powered hard over the crest with hardly a twitch. I was very impressed with it and it must have been working well as I broke the BEARS F2 lap record.

A couple of the other 675 riders were chatting to me later that day and they were complaining about being shit scared going over that crest and saying that they had to back off or they got violent head shakes. I asked them what damper they were using and they answered "the stock one" so I proudly showed them the Toby on my bike and said I go over that crest flat out.

I ran off the track at Winton in a damp practice and even though the Toby damper was set medium firm I was still able to counter steer my bike in the wet grass. Such is the smooth action of this damper.

The second most necessary place for a good damper is Eastern Creek Raceway. There are two very memorable spots for me on this track where the damper really shines. The first is turn one: at 200 km/h plus a good damper can really up your confidence, and help you not to crash your brains out!

The second spot is the crest out of turn three when the front wheel comes up whilst changing direction towards turn four -- I already have my weight on the right side of the bike in anticipation for the corner and this can really unsettle the bike and make it want to pull hard to the left. Without the Toby steering damper I would not have been game enough to push as hard as I did through that corner.

So, summing up, I am very impressed with the Toby steering damper to date. With a light twitchy bike like the Triumph Daytona 675 a good damper can really make a difference -- and not just for racing.

The factory fitted damper is pretty average on these bikes. It has no adjustments, and it is tucked away under the front lights. This may be fine for the commuter but with the state of the roads in NSW a good damper on a sports bike can mean the difference between life and death, especially with the high performance and the low weight of today's bikes.

Of course you could just get one because they look so damned cool.

Dino would like to say a big "thank you" to the following, for their help and generosity.

Steve, Eric, Arthur & Roger at Motorcycle Weaponry
Mat Mladin ,Geoff Bonfield & all at Mat Mladin Imports
Carl Barnard from GB Racing Products, Australia
Dataloc from the People's Republic of North Korea
Ray at Easyrider Imports
OLEON Specialty Oils & Lubricants
Wayne McDonald, the Tune Boy