rear shock bounce and ride height ajustment help
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freebz1122
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rear shock bounce and ride height ajustment help
i am wanting to stiffen up the rear suspension on my mk2 but am not sure how to do it. its far to bouncey and the ride hight is a little high. also i would like to ride pillion but the rear suspension bottoms out. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
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knackeredMk1
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Re: rear shock bounce and ride height ajustment help
Two basic elements to suspension - spring and damping.
Springing also has two elements:
Spring rate - How hard it it to compress the spring
Preload - How much the spring is loaded before it starts to compress.
If you are carrying a passenger then basically you need a higher spring rate. This can be compromised by increasing the preload to allow less sag when the pillion is on. This will not change the how much the spring needs to compress to take a certain force i.e. it will feel much soggier in the travel because there is much more force being applied to it by the increased weight.
If you increase the preload to cope with the initial sag with a passenger you will increase the 'ride height' when riding solo as you will not have the correct sag for the rider only.
So basically you can't have your cake and eat it.
Damping is to take the energy out of the suspension movement by transforming movement energy into heat.
The damping element comes into play when you have a passenger on as again the force for movement is much larger than with a solo.
If there is a weak point on CRMs it is the suspension which is naturally undersprung and underdamped and being at least 15 years old is not going to help. It is highly probable that your suspension would benefit from a service and possibly a small increase in damping and spring rate.
You are never going to spring and damp well for having a passenger if you want anything like a reasonable ride when going solo.
Springing also has two elements:
Spring rate - How hard it it to compress the spring
Preload - How much the spring is loaded before it starts to compress.
If you are carrying a passenger then basically you need a higher spring rate. This can be compromised by increasing the preload to allow less sag when the pillion is on. This will not change the how much the spring needs to compress to take a certain force i.e. it will feel much soggier in the travel because there is much more force being applied to it by the increased weight.
If you increase the preload to cope with the initial sag with a passenger you will increase the 'ride height' when riding solo as you will not have the correct sag for the rider only.
So basically you can't have your cake and eat it.
Damping is to take the energy out of the suspension movement by transforming movement energy into heat.
The damping element comes into play when you have a passenger on as again the force for movement is much larger than with a solo.
If there is a weak point on CRMs it is the suspension which is naturally undersprung and underdamped and being at least 15 years old is not going to help. It is highly probable that your suspension would benefit from a service and possibly a small increase in damping and spring rate.
You are never going to spring and damp well for having a passenger if you want anything like a reasonable ride when going solo.
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freebz1122
- New kid on the block
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- Posts: 22
- Joined: 24 Jul 2008, 14:38
- Bike Owned: mk2 91
Re: rear shock bounce and ride height ajustment help
ok i see i think i will leave the dampning alone, but i could do with changing the preload. how do i go about that is it just a case of undo the big top screw and the tighten the lower one. also wont compressing the sping more by tightning the lower on make the ride height lower or is there something eles i need to do for ride height. im not to bortherd how it rides pillion but the suspension at the back is a bit to bounce and i can only just touch the floor. i mainly ride on the road too. hope to get into off roading though.
Re: rear shock bounce and ride height ajustment help
If you want more help on suspensions setup, goto http://www.motocrossworld.com/site/scri ... nloads.php" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; and download the pdf files to help. these are very helpfull tips.
Jon
Jon