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Scotts Performance Steering Damper





(no, it's not a dampener)



Other than a helmet, this is your most important piece of protection.





A steering damper is designed to prevent the handlebars from being ripped out of your hands when the front wheel makes contact with solid objects at high speeds. A damper also reduces the energy needed to control the direction of the motorcycle, thereby lessening rider fatigue.​



This bike gets a damper, that bike gets a damper, every bike gets a damper.





Lebanon, missouri. August 22, 1999.



On a warm afternoon at a Missouri Hare Scrambles Championship race, I found myself sprinting across a green, hilly pasture. At high speed, my front wheel found a rock in the grass. In an instant, I was on the ground, head spinning. In that moment I made a decision to invest in a steering damper. Most likely the damper would have prevented the front wheel from deflecting so fiercely, and possibly prevented such a hard crash. I was ok and so was the bike, but it scared me enough to buy a steering damper.


I chose a Scotts Performance damper, produced by Swedish manufacturer Ohlins Racing. At the time of my big crash, this product had been on the market for many years. In the 1990s, the damper unit was typically mounted on top of the handlebar clamp. More recently, many riders are mounting the damper unit under the handlebars, to keep the area around the handlebar clamp free for other uses. The "sub-mount" also prevents the damper unit from being implanted into your face, should your head make contact with the handlebars. A metal post, or tower, is connected to the frame and joined to the damper unit. Sometimes the tower is welded directly to the frame. More commonly, the tower is clamped around the steering head.


The Scotts damper is adjustable for both low speed and high speed damping. My Lebanon crash in 1999 was an example of where the Scotts unit would have handled high speed damping. When riding through a rocky creek bed, low speed damping assists in preventing the kind of rock deflections which consume energy and sometimes produce slow-speed tip-overs.


My 1999 KTM 300EXC was the first bike to receive a Scotts steering damper. All my motorcycles since then have been similarly equipped. The damper unit is transferred from bike to bike. The mounting hardware is usually specific to each motorcycle.



The process of installing a scotts steering damper





It's not always easy.



A Scotts damper has now graced my last eight motorcycles: four KTMs, two KX250s, one Gas Gas and a Beta 300RR. Each install was unique for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the damper towers were challenging to mount. Other times mounting components were difficult to locate in the aftermarket. Occasionally I had to buy a different upper triple clamp. But with a healthy dose of time, money and patience, the damper projects all came together and worked well. Except for that time the damper fell off and I never found it. But I digress.


In my early years of damper installs, dirt bikes often came equipped with 7/8" diameter handlebars. These had crossbars which were usually too low to clear a steering damper mounted to the top of the handlebar clamp. My solution was to upgrade the bars to the tapered style which have 7/8" diameters at their ends, but larger diameters where the bars meet the triple clamps. This style of handlebar does not have a crossbar and doesn't interfere with a top-mount steering damper.


Some of my dirt bikes came with bar mounts solidly connected to the upper triple clamp. Others were outfitted with bar mounts bolted to the triple clamp. Either way, the stock bar mounts were incompatible with the larger-diameter tapered handlebars. If I was lucky, I could simply buy a new pair of bar mounts and bolt them on. But if the bar mounts were forged into the triple clamp, I had to buy a whole new triple clamp.


Next up was finding a proper handlebar clamp on which to mount the damper unit. As shown in the photos above, a variety of options are available to make that happen. With triple clamps that came with adjustable handlebar positions, the damper mount had to be compatible with the bar mount locations or else it wouldn't line up correctly with the damper tower. Communication with vendors was key to finding the correct fit.


More recently, motorcycle manufactures are equipping dirt bikes with crossbar-less handlebars, which reduces damper installation headaches. Even with no crossbars, some manufacturers outfit their bikes with rubber mounted bar mounts to reduce vibration in the handlebars. This is a no-no with the Scotts damper, as it needs the damper unit and the tower to integrate with no flex.


Damper towers are usually the final challenge of the install process. The simplest towers clamp onto the steering head. These can be adjusted easily and installed without welding skills. I've had varying levels of success with clamp-on towers, depending on how much surface area is available for the clamp to grab onto. My pair of Kawasaki KX250 had small contract areas around their steering heads, and eventually I was forced to weld the towers to the frames. Later-model KTMs have more surface area around the steering head and work much better with the clamp-on towers.​



Paying for it





Think of it as an investment.



All in, the Scotts damper package is expensive. With 2021 pricing, the damper unit itself is around $360. The tower is priced at $115 on the Scotts website. If you're lucky and only need a top clamp for the damper unit, add another $65. At minimum, this is an investment of at least $550 after sales tax and shipping. If you're dealing with rubber mounted handlebar clamps, tack on another $100 or so.


Worth it? Absolutely. I'm confident the damper has saved me from injuries and prolonged my days of riding and racing. Since 1999, the few times I've ridden a dirt bike without a damper have mostly been unpleasant experiences. This includes a hard crash at my parent's house which erased over a month of memories (most of them came back). Once I became used to the feel of the damper, it was actually more dangerous to ride without one.


So buy one...please.



How does it feel?





Pretty good, actually.



To properly analyze the damper's effect, back-to-back rides over the same trail would be the best method. I've not actually done that, but I have ridden in the same general terrain, with and without a damper. When I purchased my 2003 Kawasaki KX250, I decided to break it in at St. Joe State Park near Park Hills, Missouri. I had visited the park many times and was intimately familiar with its rocky woods. The KX250 was in stock form while I accumulated the parts needed to convert the bike into a woods machine. With no damper hardware, the bike was in its natural state as a motocrosser.


I quickly lost track of the crashes. The front wheel felt as if it were deflecting off every rock. Granted, the motocross suspension was terrible in the woods, but the handlebars worked me over that day. I just couldn't hang on.


A month or two later I was back at the park with a woods-converted motorcycle, complete with the Scotts damper. Suspension improvements aside, the damper kept me on track and the day was much more enjoyable.


I will admit that I never adjust the high speed damping. Any adjustments I make are to the slow-speed knob, which can be turned in either direction while riding. Once I found an acceptable slow speed adjustment, I rarely moved the knob more than a click or two left or right.


This is a product which, but for the cost, truly has no downside. I've read about complaints that the damper slows down the steering response, but that seems odd, given how much adjustability is built into the Scotts unit. Or maybe I'm just not as sensitive as others when it comes to steering response. Regardless, the Scotts damper is one of the few must-haves in my inventory of aftermarket parts.



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