ESR Suspension was born from a racer who wanted to give other racers a competitive edge. Earl Shuler is that man, and he has been tuning suspension for some of the best desert racers there were and are. With people like Paul Krause, Justin Imhof, Morgan Crawford, and AJ Madrid on his list of riders ESR has plenty of experience in winning. ESR Suspension is keen on being out in the desert to help you with your bike set up. Earl is frequently at the desert races sitting at the finish line waiting to ask you how it felt while it is still fresh in your head. He even gives his racers phone calls during the week to see if they are happy with what they are riding! Andrew Vandenberg was heard saying “That’s the first time I’ve ever had a suspension guy call me and ask how my suspension was!”

ESR is all about user satisfaction and gives you all he can, after the initial expense Earl will work with you providing his services and most importantly his knowledge for free (however all the piece, parts he puts in may not be free, but no other company would do that either). So he will do as many revalves as it takes to get you as happy as you possibly can be.

Now onto my personal experience with ESR Suspension. At the beginning of the year it was definitely a fight for me. I didn’t know there were many small changes and refinements to the 2010 Kawasaki’s suspension from 2009. So I initially asked him to set my bike up like my 2009 and while not horrible it was definitely a long way off of what it was the previous year. After realizing my error, it was like starting from scratch with the suspension. We had somewhat of a baseline to go off of and just tried to develop it as much as we could. After nearly every race I did if I forgot to call Earl he would be calling me asking how it felt and if there was anything he could do to make it better than it already was. It took a while but through frequent talks with Earl, some discussions, and even some near arguments about how the bike was working, I feel that we have come a long way from where I was at the beginning of the year. I am much more comfortable on the bike, and that is the key to going fast being comfortable, and that’s why suspension is so important and should be the top thing on your lists of things to do.

Even though I feel comfortable now Earl is still trying to push me to give more feedback on the suspension and find better ways to set it up. One of the things he keeps telling me is that if we go the wrong way or do the wrong thing we can always change it back to how it was. He’s willing to experiment with something different and it really opened my mind to all the things that you could do with suspension and how you could get the bike working, and when it’s working well, man is it good!

Like I said suspension is the most important thing you need to help you go faster. If you aren’t comfortable on the bike then there is no way you can hope to go faster with a pipe or other bling on the bike. Good set up is key to success and you can ask any racer in the top 20 and he’ll give you almost that exact answer. With summer coming to a close and the racing season about to start up again, if you have a little extra cash lying around from not racing over summer maybe it’s time to invest in getting your bike set up just right.  

---Ryan Kudla