So this is a "Review" of the Matris F12T102S cartridges for the regular "non R" Street Triple. Disclaimer: I'm not a suspension expert, and I've never done track riding. I'm just a street rider with a couple of years' experience, on his 2nd bike, with a garage, tools, and a fondness for DIY.
BACKGROUND
I bought my '09 Streetie, NON-R, in January of this year. Aside from new '12s and '13s, it was the only Street Triple for sale within reasonable distance of me when I upgraded from my Ninja 250R. In retrospect if there had been a used R available I'd have gone for one of those instead, but I didn't have the choice then. I love my bike, but as we probably all know, the front suspension of the standard Street can be fickle and unsatisfactory for some. I'm a heavier guy (weighing anywhere between 200-235 at any given time in the last couple of years) and on my first rides I found that on some of the bumpier local roads, the bike would pitch like a boat on the ocean, and in the curves - what passes for "Twisties" in this part of Texas, anyway - I had a very uncertain, jittery feeling from the front end, as if the front was skittering over bumps. Part of this was because of six year old Dunlops that felt like wood to the touch - I ditched them for Pilot Road 3s as soon as possible - but I suspected that part of it was front suspension related. I did some reading and found a repost on TriumphRat of an e-mail from Maxton suspension in the UK, where one of Maxton's reps said that the standard bike has too much compression damping, among other issues. It's also been said that the factory cartridges are not easily re-valved, compared to those of other bikes. And of course, the standard suspension is non-adjustable to begin with. I had already put an Ohlins TR805 in the back because I had an Ohlins shock on my previous bike and loved it, and what they say is absolutely true about a well-sorted rear shock highlighting all the problems with the front. I felt like I didn't have a lot of confidence in the stock front as-is. I asked myself, could I live with this front end?
The answer was "No", I really wasn't interested in riding around a skittish, vague front end that sometimes bucked like the time I got seasick on a whale watch boat out of Provincetown when I was a kid, especially since Triumph 675s have such a reputation for good handling. I also hate not being able to adjust things - I like flexibility - but I didn't want to go through the trouble of having a shop work on my forks, either; I installed Race Tech cartridge emulators and the Ohlins shock on my Ninjette by myself, and I have learned that I prefer to just pay for upgrade parts up front and do the installation work on my own time, even if I have to buy more tools. My insistence on DIY narrowed options down to two:
1. Swap in a Daytona 675 front end.
2. Replace the fork cartridges with adjustable, high quality units from Matris, Traxxion Dynamics, or Maxton (UK only). As for other brands, there may be Ohlins cartridges that fit the standard bike's fork tubes, but I couldn't find a square answer on that, and Ohlins fork components are f-you race money anyway. K-Tech makes cartridges, but they are for the Street Triple R only. There are of course professional shops that will do cartridge work, but I didn't want to have my bike sitting around for weeks with missing forks while I waited for somebody else to try and make the mediocre into the passable, when I could just rip out the whole problem at once by myself.
Option 1 would see me sniffing around on eBay for weeks or months, and I didn't want to bother, even if it meant getting better radial brakes. I wanted to upgrade the front ASAP, and as simply as possible too. So I forged ahead with Option 2, the cartridge change. But which cartridges? Maxton was attractive for being British like the bike, but they no longer sell to the Colonies because of liability concerns, so it was either Matris or Traxxion. I decided on Matris because of cost, modularity (old cartridge out, new one in, all DIY with no sending forks elsewhere for work), and quite honestly the adjusters on the cartridges looked better than Traxxion's to me.
THE CARTRIDGES
This is the clearest product listing online for the Matris cartridges: F12T102S at CarpiMoto.it
I ordered from PJ's Parts instead of CarpiMoto because they were cheaper. Total ended up being just shy of $960 delivered. Order process went like this: I e-mailed PJ & Paige with what I wanted, they took a $300 deposit and placed an order with Matris in Italy, with details about my weight & riding style. I told PJ that Rider weight ungeared was ~220lbs or 100KG, riding was "spirited" street only, some commuting, and occasional light touring on variable quality road surfaces with soft luggage, no passenger. Matris worked up the kit and shipped it to PJ's, at which point PJ's billed me for the remaining cost, and sent me the cartridges by USPS. It was a little over six weeks from order e-mail to receipt, including a shipping delay caused by some random Italian work holiday. Once the cartridges got to the U.S., PJ was very quick about sending them to me.
What I got in the box was:
- Two cartridges, one with adjustable Rebound and the other with adjustable Compression (the only way to tell them apart is the cap)
- General instruction and setup sheets in both Italian and English
- Springs set to my weight - mine were scratched with "9.5", for 9.5n/mm
- A 1L bottle of Motorex 7.5 weight fork oil
- Some PJ's Parts schwag
- Matris stickers (all good moto gear comes with stickers, it's like a law)
Matris by default puts 8.5n/mm springs in the kit according to the CarpiMoto page, but they put 9.5 in mine. They definitely pick springs for you, but I don't know if they adjust valving also. I also bought some Silkolene Pro RSF 7.5 oil on my own to use instead of the kit oil, just because that's my preferred brand.
Here are some crappy cell phone pics of the components, just before I put them in the forks. I didn't think to photograph them in the box before starting work, or after installation, and I didn't photograph the instructions either, but before purchase I found that af1racing.com had a copy of Matris' general instruction sheet here. My instructions looked a lot like those.
![Image]()
The cartridge. They give the impression of fine machining and light weight. Construction is aluminum and plastic. The green ring is actually placed right about where the instruction's recommended oil level (125mm) is when fully assembled. I was a little bit concerned, comparing the weight of the Matris with the stock parts; the Matris components feel almost delicate.
![Image]()
Adjusters/head piece. Very finely made, fine threads, preload is adjusted with the big silver wheel. Black base is a 37mm hex shape, and compression (or rebound) is adjusted with the little hex button screw in the center. Preload "click", about a half a turn of the silver wheel, cranks down the gray insert at the bottom of the head in 1mm increments. I don't know what happens within the damping adjusters but they distinctively click when turned with a small hex wrench - size is either 3 or 4mm, I've forgotten which. Adjustment feels sharp and clean on both damping and preload, with a clear feeling of bottoming out when you turn back below "first click".
![Image]()
Spring and spacer. The spacer is aluminum, and there is no hole in it like there is on every other cartridge spacer in the world. So, when you use the fork spring compression tool (like one from RaceTech), the posts of the compressor arm need to go over the lip at the top of the spacer. Even Matris' instructions indicate that there should be holes, but there aren't on these.
INSTALLATION
Basically I followed the instructions in the Daytona 675 Fork Oil and Seal Change thread. You'll need the tools recommended in that thread, and whatever tools you need for taking off the front wheel, etc. I put Compression cartridge on the left and Rebound on the right, because that's the way Triumph sets up the new Daytona 675R according to pictures I found, but I don't think it matters which type of damping goes where. There were only these exceptions to the cartridge change process described in the thread:
- The cartridge holder tool "TFCH 01" recommended by Race Tech is wrong, wrong, wrong. It doesn't work for the standard Street Triple, the diameter is wrong, the teeth are too wide and beveled wrong. They don't bite into the cartridge rim, not even a little bit. I ended up fabricating my own tool out of a 1" PVC with an electric saw and a rotary tool with a grinder head. It barely worked but that's because of my shoddy craftsmanship. I can take a picture of what I made, if anybody wants to see, but it's ugly! You will NOT be able to get the stock cartridges out without some sort of holding tool. Will NOT. Forget it, don't bother if you don't have a tool of some sort. That 8mm screw will turn and turn and the cartridge will turn, turn, turn like the Byrds song and it'll never come out unless you grip it.
The measurements for holding the cartridges are roughly as follows:
- Stock cartridge removal: ~25mm inside pipe diameter, (maybe a bit more, like 26/27), with 4 teeth about 10mm wide each
- Matris insertion: 30mm inside pipe diameter, 4 teeth about 7mm wide each
- The spring spacers do not have holes to plug the compressor tool into, as previously mentioned; put the pegs of the tool over the lip of the spacer piece.
- There is no torque setting for attaching the caps to the cartridge rods. The caps tighten down flush onto the top of the rod, and you can tighten as light or heavy as you want. I didn't have a way to get a torque wrench on the cap base properly, so I settled for a very hard hand-tighten.
- If you have a Motion Pro fork oil level tool, it doesn't fit inside the outer fork tube's diameter. So, when measuring the oil level (outer tube collapsed down), I put the tool on top of the outer tube, measured the additional height above the inner tube's rim, and accounted for the extra when setting the measuring pipe's length.
- Take care when installing the springs to make sure that they aren't binding or off-center in any way. You should be able to adjust preload without hearing any creaking. I had to re-install the spring and cap on the left side because the first time I put everything together, I heard a metallic creaking when I adjusted preload on the left, but not the right. I'm not sure what was wrong with the spring alignment exactly but a re-insertion fixed it. I also put a little bit of oil on the mating surfaces at the bottom of the cap. Make sure everything is all right before fully reassembling the front, because any problems will require a full tear-down and start over.
- Be careful threading the caps into the fork tops; the threads are very fine and feel like they'd be easy to damage or cross-thread.
- Unbolt and lift away the handlebars before the fork insertion and final cap tightening. They will be in the way of everything you want to do.
- Double check the height of the fork tube lip vs. yoke top when installing. The manual's value is 4mm, but mine were more like 2.5mm from the factory.
- Tightening the fork caps into the upper tubes requires a 37mm hex socket, or a really big wrench. There's no spec in the instructions for cap tightness, either going onto the top of the cartridge rod or going into the fork tube. The caps are lightweight components and will mar if you are ham-fisted or have the wrong tools. I couldn't locate a 37mm hex socket at any local hardware stores, and I didn't have a wrench big enough, so I settled for a 1 7/16" mechanic's socket from Lowes with a 1/2" drive adapter, and I put some plastic wrap on the caps when I tightened them. Stock cap torque per the manual is 25NM if I remember right. I managed to get these to 20NM before I felt like I might start tearing up the cap surface.
SETTINGS
The instruction sheet recommends the following settings:
Rebound: 12-16 clicks
Compression: 12-16 clicks
Preload: 12 clicks (I think each click adds 1mm of load on the spring)
Oil level: 125mm, "Between 120 and 130mm"
7.5 weight Motorex oil included with the cartridges
You can research different oil weights and viscosities here. I use Silkolene Pro RSF in my forks, and the 7.5 Silkolene is about the same viscosity as the Motorex 7.5 included with the kit.
I don't know precisely what the damping "clicks" do mechanically, so I used the recommended settings. I didn't have anybody around to help me properly measure sag/preload, either, so I went with instruction settings there too. Oil level seemed in the ballpark for a higher air gap; the revised service manual recommends 107mm, I've seen reference to Dave Moss recommending 110mm, and somewhere I saw an Ohlins recommendation for 130mm on a Daytona with their forks & oil, so I figured 125mm was OK. Given the reputation for harshness in the front end, a larger air gap didn't seem like a bad idea.
REVIEW in the next post - This one exceeded the character limit...
BACKGROUND
I bought my '09 Streetie, NON-R, in January of this year. Aside from new '12s and '13s, it was the only Street Triple for sale within reasonable distance of me when I upgraded from my Ninja 250R. In retrospect if there had been a used R available I'd have gone for one of those instead, but I didn't have the choice then. I love my bike, but as we probably all know, the front suspension of the standard Street can be fickle and unsatisfactory for some. I'm a heavier guy (weighing anywhere between 200-235 at any given time in the last couple of years) and on my first rides I found that on some of the bumpier local roads, the bike would pitch like a boat on the ocean, and in the curves - what passes for "Twisties" in this part of Texas, anyway - I had a very uncertain, jittery feeling from the front end, as if the front was skittering over bumps. Part of this was because of six year old Dunlops that felt like wood to the touch - I ditched them for Pilot Road 3s as soon as possible - but I suspected that part of it was front suspension related. I did some reading and found a repost on TriumphRat of an e-mail from Maxton suspension in the UK, where one of Maxton's reps said that the standard bike has too much compression damping, among other issues. It's also been said that the factory cartridges are not easily re-valved, compared to those of other bikes. And of course, the standard suspension is non-adjustable to begin with. I had already put an Ohlins TR805 in the back because I had an Ohlins shock on my previous bike and loved it, and what they say is absolutely true about a well-sorted rear shock highlighting all the problems with the front. I felt like I didn't have a lot of confidence in the stock front as-is. I asked myself, could I live with this front end?
The answer was "No", I really wasn't interested in riding around a skittish, vague front end that sometimes bucked like the time I got seasick on a whale watch boat out of Provincetown when I was a kid, especially since Triumph 675s have such a reputation for good handling. I also hate not being able to adjust things - I like flexibility - but I didn't want to go through the trouble of having a shop work on my forks, either; I installed Race Tech cartridge emulators and the Ohlins shock on my Ninjette by myself, and I have learned that I prefer to just pay for upgrade parts up front and do the installation work on my own time, even if I have to buy more tools. My insistence on DIY narrowed options down to two:
1. Swap in a Daytona 675 front end.
2. Replace the fork cartridges with adjustable, high quality units from Matris, Traxxion Dynamics, or Maxton (UK only). As for other brands, there may be Ohlins cartridges that fit the standard bike's fork tubes, but I couldn't find a square answer on that, and Ohlins fork components are f-you race money anyway. K-Tech makes cartridges, but they are for the Street Triple R only. There are of course professional shops that will do cartridge work, but I didn't want to have my bike sitting around for weeks with missing forks while I waited for somebody else to try and make the mediocre into the passable, when I could just rip out the whole problem at once by myself.
Option 1 would see me sniffing around on eBay for weeks or months, and I didn't want to bother, even if it meant getting better radial brakes. I wanted to upgrade the front ASAP, and as simply as possible too. So I forged ahead with Option 2, the cartridge change. But which cartridges? Maxton was attractive for being British like the bike, but they no longer sell to the Colonies because of liability concerns, so it was either Matris or Traxxion. I decided on Matris because of cost, modularity (old cartridge out, new one in, all DIY with no sending forks elsewhere for work), and quite honestly the adjusters on the cartridges looked better than Traxxion's to me.
THE CARTRIDGES
This is the clearest product listing online for the Matris cartridges: F12T102S at CarpiMoto.it
I ordered from PJ's Parts instead of CarpiMoto because they were cheaper. Total ended up being just shy of $960 delivered. Order process went like this: I e-mailed PJ & Paige with what I wanted, they took a $300 deposit and placed an order with Matris in Italy, with details about my weight & riding style. I told PJ that Rider weight ungeared was ~220lbs or 100KG, riding was "spirited" street only, some commuting, and occasional light touring on variable quality road surfaces with soft luggage, no passenger. Matris worked up the kit and shipped it to PJ's, at which point PJ's billed me for the remaining cost, and sent me the cartridges by USPS. It was a little over six weeks from order e-mail to receipt, including a shipping delay caused by some random Italian work holiday. Once the cartridges got to the U.S., PJ was very quick about sending them to me.
What I got in the box was:
- Two cartridges, one with adjustable Rebound and the other with adjustable Compression (the only way to tell them apart is the cap)
- General instruction and setup sheets in both Italian and English
- Springs set to my weight - mine were scratched with "9.5", for 9.5n/mm
- A 1L bottle of Motorex 7.5 weight fork oil
- Some PJ's Parts schwag
- Matris stickers (all good moto gear comes with stickers, it's like a law)
Matris by default puts 8.5n/mm springs in the kit according to the CarpiMoto page, but they put 9.5 in mine. They definitely pick springs for you, but I don't know if they adjust valving also. I also bought some Silkolene Pro RSF 7.5 oil on my own to use instead of the kit oil, just because that's my preferred brand.
Here are some crappy cell phone pics of the components, just before I put them in the forks. I didn't think to photograph them in the box before starting work, or after installation, and I didn't photograph the instructions either, but before purchase I found that af1racing.com had a copy of Matris' general instruction sheet here. My instructions looked a lot like those.
The cartridge. They give the impression of fine machining and light weight. Construction is aluminum and plastic. The green ring is actually placed right about where the instruction's recommended oil level (125mm) is when fully assembled. I was a little bit concerned, comparing the weight of the Matris with the stock parts; the Matris components feel almost delicate.
Adjusters/head piece. Very finely made, fine threads, preload is adjusted with the big silver wheel. Black base is a 37mm hex shape, and compression (or rebound) is adjusted with the little hex button screw in the center. Preload "click", about a half a turn of the silver wheel, cranks down the gray insert at the bottom of the head in 1mm increments. I don't know what happens within the damping adjusters but they distinctively click when turned with a small hex wrench - size is either 3 or 4mm, I've forgotten which. Adjustment feels sharp and clean on both damping and preload, with a clear feeling of bottoming out when you turn back below "first click".
Spring and spacer. The spacer is aluminum, and there is no hole in it like there is on every other cartridge spacer in the world. So, when you use the fork spring compression tool (like one from RaceTech), the posts of the compressor arm need to go over the lip at the top of the spacer. Even Matris' instructions indicate that there should be holes, but there aren't on these.
INSTALLATION
Basically I followed the instructions in the Daytona 675 Fork Oil and Seal Change thread. You'll need the tools recommended in that thread, and whatever tools you need for taking off the front wheel, etc. I put Compression cartridge on the left and Rebound on the right, because that's the way Triumph sets up the new Daytona 675R according to pictures I found, but I don't think it matters which type of damping goes where. There were only these exceptions to the cartridge change process described in the thread:
- The cartridge holder tool "TFCH 01" recommended by Race Tech is wrong, wrong, wrong. It doesn't work for the standard Street Triple, the diameter is wrong, the teeth are too wide and beveled wrong. They don't bite into the cartridge rim, not even a little bit. I ended up fabricating my own tool out of a 1" PVC with an electric saw and a rotary tool with a grinder head. It barely worked but that's because of my shoddy craftsmanship. I can take a picture of what I made, if anybody wants to see, but it's ugly! You will NOT be able to get the stock cartridges out without some sort of holding tool. Will NOT. Forget it, don't bother if you don't have a tool of some sort. That 8mm screw will turn and turn and the cartridge will turn, turn, turn like the Byrds song and it'll never come out unless you grip it.
The measurements for holding the cartridges are roughly as follows:
- Stock cartridge removal: ~25mm inside pipe diameter, (maybe a bit more, like 26/27), with 4 teeth about 10mm wide each
- Matris insertion: 30mm inside pipe diameter, 4 teeth about 7mm wide each
- The spring spacers do not have holes to plug the compressor tool into, as previously mentioned; put the pegs of the tool over the lip of the spacer piece.
- There is no torque setting for attaching the caps to the cartridge rods. The caps tighten down flush onto the top of the rod, and you can tighten as light or heavy as you want. I didn't have a way to get a torque wrench on the cap base properly, so I settled for a very hard hand-tighten.
- If you have a Motion Pro fork oil level tool, it doesn't fit inside the outer fork tube's diameter. So, when measuring the oil level (outer tube collapsed down), I put the tool on top of the outer tube, measured the additional height above the inner tube's rim, and accounted for the extra when setting the measuring pipe's length.
- Take care when installing the springs to make sure that they aren't binding or off-center in any way. You should be able to adjust preload without hearing any creaking. I had to re-install the spring and cap on the left side because the first time I put everything together, I heard a metallic creaking when I adjusted preload on the left, but not the right. I'm not sure what was wrong with the spring alignment exactly but a re-insertion fixed it. I also put a little bit of oil on the mating surfaces at the bottom of the cap. Make sure everything is all right before fully reassembling the front, because any problems will require a full tear-down and start over.
- Be careful threading the caps into the fork tops; the threads are very fine and feel like they'd be easy to damage or cross-thread.
- Unbolt and lift away the handlebars before the fork insertion and final cap tightening. They will be in the way of everything you want to do.
- Double check the height of the fork tube lip vs. yoke top when installing. The manual's value is 4mm, but mine were more like 2.5mm from the factory.
- Tightening the fork caps into the upper tubes requires a 37mm hex socket, or a really big wrench. There's no spec in the instructions for cap tightness, either going onto the top of the cartridge rod or going into the fork tube. The caps are lightweight components and will mar if you are ham-fisted or have the wrong tools. I couldn't locate a 37mm hex socket at any local hardware stores, and I didn't have a wrench big enough, so I settled for a 1 7/16" mechanic's socket from Lowes with a 1/2" drive adapter, and I put some plastic wrap on the caps when I tightened them. Stock cap torque per the manual is 25NM if I remember right. I managed to get these to 20NM before I felt like I might start tearing up the cap surface.
SETTINGS
The instruction sheet recommends the following settings:
Rebound: 12-16 clicks
Compression: 12-16 clicks
Preload: 12 clicks (I think each click adds 1mm of load on the spring)
Oil level: 125mm, "Between 120 and 130mm"
7.5 weight Motorex oil included with the cartridges
You can research different oil weights and viscosities here. I use Silkolene Pro RSF in my forks, and the 7.5 Silkolene is about the same viscosity as the Motorex 7.5 included with the kit.
I don't know precisely what the damping "clicks" do mechanically, so I used the recommended settings. I didn't have anybody around to help me properly measure sag/preload, either, so I went with instruction settings there too. Oil level seemed in the ballpark for a higher air gap; the revised service manual recommends 107mm, I've seen reference to Dave Moss recommending 110mm, and somewhere I saw an Ohlins recommendation for 130mm on a Daytona with their forks & oil, so I figured 125mm was OK. Given the reputation for harshness in the front end, a larger air gap didn't seem like a bad idea.
REVIEW in the next post - This one exceeded the character limit...
