The early Thorntons (generally the ones sold through Magri) had a Mercury crest transfer on them and were marked "front only" and "rear only" because the damping is different for each end. There were no coil-overs and no part numbers. I think that sometime in the late 2000s they designed a coil-over for the rear. I made my own in 2004, so I know that one was not available at that time.
At some point around the 2010s maybe the distribution was taken over by David Malloy. A rear coil-over was made available, also. These had part numbers. There were part numbers for rear Comet coil-overs and Rapide coil-overs, presumably for the differing rear springs. However, the front dampers had different part numbers for the Comet and Rapide. This was not true of the earlier dampers purchased through Magri. They were interchangeable on the front. Also, around this time the Mercury crest transfer disappeared. When the front dampers received different part numbers I suspected that they could be differently valved, but based upon the superior performance of the interchangeable early front dampers, I found that hard to believe. I was never able to ask Works Performance before they went out of business.
The front dampers from Works Performance had different part numbers show by paper tags, but they did away with the stamping of front and rear. Because there was no stamped part number, there was no way to distinguish the front dampers after the tag was removed. This led me to believe that they may have been the same part, but they may have distinguished the two for inventory or sales reasons, or the possibility that they would introduce changes in the future.
Pat Manning ordered a large number of dampers from Laney Thornton because we felt the dampers were so far superior to all of the other dampers that we did not want to be without them in the future. I later learned from Patrick Godet that he used Works Performance dampers on all of his Grey Flash racers. One of my last conversations with Patrick was about the dampers. He intended to make them himself as they were no longer available.
We had a few extra dampers and coil-overs, which we sold to others. David Tompkins got a set for his racer and Dave Hulstone got a front damper. As far as I know, these were all Comet front dampers as the twin front dampers had sold out first.
To Dave's comments, All of the dampers were tagged front and rear and all of the dampers were sent with their original tags, which had the Works Performance part number. Pat marked them with a sharpie to make the tag more visible.
No stamping.
Manufacturer's tag.
As to the stiffness, I can only say that this is the same damper that David Tompkin's is racing with and I think he would hurt anyone who tried to change the performance. The bike has been ridden by national champions as well as a TT winner and gets excellent reviews, but maybe that extra stiffness you are feeling on the street is helping on the race track.
It may be easily resolved by going to 5W fork oil. I don't know what they came with, but at one point they were supplied with 10W. It will give you a chance to put clean oil in and see that everything is OK. In general, I think the oil should be changed more often than owners tend to. On the racer, I would change it at 6 months and on the street, it would be once a season, at the minimum.
Just as a note, I sent one of these to a Comet owner who was experiencing handling problems with his new Comet with an AVO. He complained that he AVO was too stiff to move by hand. The new Works Performance damper fixed his handling problem. Nothing against AVO. I think had he sent it back they would have fixed the problem, it was more an issue of being in the US and getting to ride his new bike.
David
