We hear a lot of talk about wet and dry set-up, but what does it mean? MCN spoke with Tommy Bridewell’s Honda crew chief, Chris Pike, to understand what changes they make for the bad weather…
Suspension sensations
“One option is to go 10% softer on the spring and open the damping. Some may have a special wet shock with less damping in it. With the front, you tend to just open the clickers, because it’s a big job to change the forks.
“If it’s not quite so wet you’ll just soften your dry settings; take 3-4mm off the preload on the front and rear spring, and open the damping. When you don’t have much time to change it, you’ll do that quickly to get the best setting in the time available. If you do have time, you’ll do the 10% setting.
“The aim is to have the same amount of suspension travel in the rain as the dry, so that the bike behaves in the same way.”
Dropping the power
“Your dry engine brake setting would likely lock the rear in the wet so you have to have it more free as there’s less grip available. Power wise, again there’s less grip available, the more power you have in the throttle, the more of a fight the rider is in.
“It’s easier to drop the power. Our power levels are set in newtons so we’d go minus two newton levels on each map and we probably drop a couple of newtons in the wet on the torque map.”
