Thermos Man Suspension Plug

[tdelegram]

All,

Some of you have heard of or worked with the legendary Thermos Man in the past some of have not. I wanted to share my experience and post his contact information because of the customer service he provided me. For those that don't know Mike, he is the Ohlins guy for the US professional team race teams, you can also google him and find some cool youtubes and articles. I was having issues with my RC8 Ohlins fork bottoming out under hard braking and I contacted Mike he was aware of the issue with the stock FRGT valving and had a solution. After tearing down my forks he found that one of the legs was not working at 100% and corrected that, he also revalved and gave me and additional 10MM of fork travel so the bike will ride higher in the front which should increase braking stability. During the tear down Mike contacted me letting me know that my right fork leg had a scratch in the nitride coating, he first tried to sand and polish it out without any luck. He knew I was worried about seals wearing due to the scratch so he swapped out that lower tube with an identical new one he uses as a teaching teardown fork and didn't charge me for the new leg. Mike works on more than Ohlins so o would recommend that if you need a fork or shock service, re-valve, or re-spring contact him he's great to deal with. Finally, with shipping 10 day turnaround time!

Mike can be reached at:

Michael Fitzgerald <thermosman@gmail.com>

Thanks,
Tom

 

[D-Zum]

Fitzgerald's an awesome guy, and one of the Suspension Jedi's. Probably the Yoda of them all.

About 5 years ago I bought a new R6. Then saw Ohlins was running a off-season special. 25mm fork kit and shock for $2200.
So I called and took advantage of the deal, send my forks down. Mike calls me back and said they were out of the 25mm's and
he was updating mine to the newer 30mm cartridges at no extra charge.

 

[Otto Man]

For the longest time I always wondered why women would only let a certain stylist touch their hair. I used to think "a hair cut is a hair cut, what difference does it make?" I had some suspension problems with a semi-local suspension guy and wanted to get a second opinion. I decided to give the legendary Thermosman a try. He identified the problems with the settings of the forks/shock - wrong fork oil height, rear shock way out of adjustment, etc. He asked me if I had problems getting the bike to turn in. He knew one of the problems I was having - and I didn't even tell him that I struggled with turn in. He saw the way the suspension was set up and knew it'd give me turn in problems. The difference is night and day. That's when it really hit home for me - having good suspension doesn't mean shit if it's not properly set up for you. Simply bolting on a fancy shock/forks won't make it any better than stock.

Well now, very similar to how some women will only get their hair cut by certain people, Mike is the only person that touches my suspension. That is not to say there aren't some great suspension tuners our there - there are, no doubt. But I'm extremely pleased with my experience with Thermosman and at this time, have no reason to go with anyone else.

 

[tdelegram]

My wife cuts my hair, I'll see if she wants to start doing suspension work.

 

[D-Zum]

Tom's wife is ScissorsWoman?

 

[bacolmm]

I too am a Thermosman fan! Before I purchased my 11 750 we traded a bunch of emails regarding getting the geometry set up correctly. Once I got the bike I sent him my forks and shock and he changed all the springs, re-valved everything and installed extender caps on the forks. It all cost less than an aftermarket shock and I’ve been very happy with the results.