We got really warm weather today - 10C (50F for US folks) So I took the bike for a spin. Good news , nothing fell apart on the ride after me overhauling both the front and the rear
Seriously though, to be honest I lack experience to provide good judgment of what has changed but here are my observations that you might be able to help me to interpret.
1. The bike now "hugs" the road. It's follows the contour of the surface and does not float like it used to be. From the comfort prospective it's worse
from the control perspective it's great. It feels more predictable now. I got the same feeling that I had when I replaced the stock Sachs struts on my BMW 328 with Bilstein HD. I wanted to puke in the beginning because on a road that is a tiny bit wavy up and down it was creating the rocking motion that made me want to puke
Cannot blame the car it was just following the road.
2. The dive has significantly reduced.
3. I was not able to bottom it out while doing the controlled emergency brake. I compressed it pretty hard. I know because I lost the rear end and it swayed a bit. The forks went only about 75% in, The front end did not skid ! Before the change my front end would always skid in this case as I was (as I found out later) completely bottoming out the forks. And I cannot blame it on the better traction as the ground is still near freezing temps now and when I was testing it before the ground was way warmer.
4. I feel the steering is more predictable now.
5. Riding in normal conditions the forks wend down to 6cm max (out of 11 available - about 55%). It used to be 9cm which was is 85%.
I set my emulators towards the higher preload. I might want to try to unload them just a bit. Will see, I think I will ride it for a bit and then play with it. I want the weather to warm up a bit so the oil is warmer.
Overall I think it's great and I am happy for spending that money. I should have done it earlier, but how would I have known