Official unveiling of Napoleon 250 bobber reveals how that strange front end works.

By Ben Purvis | www.cycleworld.com

We got the first images of Benda’s BD250 back in March and now it’s been officially unveiled as the Napoleon 250. The bike’s specifications match the numbers from our original story, including the long 60.8-inch wheelbase, 25.5-hp output with 249cc capacity, but the official release adds more meat to those bones. The V-twin engine, which is liquid-cooled despite the finned cylinders, is a DOHC design that hits that power peak at 9,000 rpm and manages 18.4 lb.-ft. of torque at 5,500 rpm.

But the real intrigue around the Napoleon 250 is its unusual front and rear suspension designs, and with new images and even some video of the bike in action it’s finally possible to see how it operates.

The front end is particularly unusual. At first glance it looks like a girder fork design with unusual, side-mounted springs hidden inside rubber gaiters, but the reality is even stranger than that. As we pointed out in our original story, there is a conventional-looking fork hiding behind those girders, which hinted that they could be dummy units. That’s not as outlandish an idea as it seems, because Benda’s larger Napoleon 500 cruiser already uses fork covers to give the appearance of a girder front end.

But the Napoleon 250′s solution is even stranger. Yes, there is a conventional fork in there, but those additional cast aluminum components in front of them also appear to serve a purpose. Far from being solid girders, they’re really hinged linkages with pivots at the top and bottom ends and a knee-style joint in the middle where the ends of that gaiter-clad shock units bolt to them. That means as the forks compress, the “knees” in those front links bend, stretching rather than compressing those shocks.

Benda hasn’t gone into detail about their operation, but it looks like the main springing and damping is done by the conventional fork, and those extra units on each side are supplementary dampers. Benda says they’re adjustable too, via the gold-colored screws on their upper ends. Will the result be better than conventional adjustable forks? It’s unlikely, but the system adds an element of interest that would otherwise be missing, and at least it’s a real, mechanical component rather than simply a cosmetic affectation.

The suspension strangeness doesn’t end there. The rear end is also unconventional and more complex than it first appears. You might think those two rear coilovers are connected directly between the swingarm and the frame, but in fact there’s another multilink system at play. The swingarm is not unlike the design used on other bobbers, with a triangular design that’s intended to mimic the shape of old hardtail frames. At the front, the upper and lower sections of the swingarm are connected by a central section attaching them to the swingarm pivot.

The upper end of each rear coilover is attached to the frame while the bottom mounts on one end of an L-shaped rocker. The corner of that “L” pivots on the swingarm, and the other end is attached to another straight linkage that runs forward to the bike’s frame. The result is that as the rear suspension goes over a bump the L-shaped linkage rocks, compressing the coilover more than it would be compressed if it was attached straight to the swingarm.

These aren’t ideas that are going to revolutionize motorcycle suspension design but they add a custom, high-end look to a bike that’s otherwise at the lower end of the market. Benda already has an eye on the US market, so it will be interesting to see if the Napoleon makes it here as a rival to Honda’s Rebel and Kawasaki’s Eliminator.