9/17/13 - Steering Stabilizer

Tonight I installed the Billet Racing Products Rubber Mounted Sub Mount and Scott Steering Stabilizer on my KTM 300 XC-W.  It was a a little bit of a struggle getting the steering post installed since I had to remove the triple clamps (which frees up the front forks and tire from the frame) and then get it all back together.  The biggest pain was getting the fork/head to go back up inside the frame and line up properly.  Eventually (2.5 hours later), I got all of it working and I took the bike for a quick ride to test it out.  It should give me a little better control in rough/rocky terrain because it keeps the front wheel going straight.  You can dial the amount of dampening you want right on the unit.  I wanted to spend the extra money to get the BRP system that mounts the stabilizer underneath the bars for a cleaner and safer set up overall, although it's not the cheap way to go. 

Overall I think I'm really going to like this new set up and a bonus is that the bars about about an inch higher than they used to be.  That is good thing for me which will keep me a little straigher up when I'm standing on the bike (which is about half the time).  The rubber mounts are supposed to reduce some of the vibration although I didn't notice a huge difference on the 15-20 minute burn I went on tonight.  It shipped with blue bushings that you can swap out for a softer feel if you like.

One downer is that the Cycra wrap-around hand guards that I so pains taking installed while camping this summer will have to have different mounts in order to work with this new set up, so I had to leave them off for now.

Once I was finished putting tools away it was completely dark.  The pics below were taken on a tripod with a 10 second exposure since I don't have a flash on the Canon 6D.  I used my 50mm lens for these shots at f8.