VOL. 52 ISSUE 37 SEPTEMBER 15, 2015 P97
BY ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHEN PIPER
E
ver since the telescopic
fork was invented back
in 1908 by Britain's Alfred
Angas Scott, founder of the Scott
Motor Cycle Company, engineers
have been looking for an alterna-
tive means of mounting the front
wheel in a motorcycle frame,
while at the same time steering
the vehicle with it. Scott's tele fork
was undamped, but in the 1930s,
BMW took the concept to the
next level, and the first production
motorcycles carrying a hydrauli-
cally damped telescopic fork were
its R12 and R17 models, which
debuted in 1935. Soon after, in
1939 Denmark's Nimbus concern
introduced hydraulic damping on
its four-cylinder models, which
since 1933 had been equipped
with an unsprung tele fork, and
after the hiatus caused by WWII,
in the late 1940s telescopic fork
front suspension rapidly became
the norm globally.
It did so complete with all the
drawbacks that a telescopic fork
is known to suffer from, includ-
ing stiction caused by increased
friction driven by the fork tubes
bending slightly, aka deflection.
This happens most commonly
under heavy braking, when, more-
over, excessive brake dive will use
up wheel travel and thus dimin-
ish damping capability, as well
as delivering inconsistent steer-
ing geometry during turn-in to a
bend. This happens when braking
forces fed through the suspen-
Telescopic forks have
been the norm for
years but are far from
perfect. The latest
attempt to build the
better fork is this
triangulated steering
and suspension system
found on the prototype
Motoinno TS3.
