Damper Shocks vs Air Shocks

There are pluses and minuses for going air (leakage being the biggest minus) Also just how often will one adjust the suspension once they have found the comfort level they desire?  I ride by myself 65% of the time and weigh around 160.  My wife and I ride together the balance of the time and she weight about the same.  

So my question is - Is there any appreciable difference in the ride between the two types of of suspensions - dampened shocks vs air?  I have an 1998 HD Heritage.  

As far as I know, air shocks simply use an air chamber instead of cam/notches, to adjust the spring preload. No shock for motorcycles has adjustable damping so if you want to change the damping to suit the weight load, you have to have two separate sets of shocks to use.

To me, comfort level refers to how much of the bump impact is transfered to the frame by the shock. That won't change when you adjust the preload, no matter what the method. That's why I carry a 75 pound chunk of steel on the seat behind me. The extra weight forces the shocks to absorb more of the impacts instead of bouncing my bad back.

The spring preload allows you to adjust the ride height when the load on the bike changes. This is important if you have a chain or belt drive, but it's simply a matter of convenience for shaft drives. With a chain or belt drive, you should adjust the preload to re-align the sprockets and swingarm pivot bolt under load, any time the weight on the bike changes by more than 50 pounds.

regards,
Joe  

Hmm, I thought that you could soften or stiffen the ride of by adjusting the shock.  Are you saying that the adjustment only raises or lowers the bike? OR does rising/lowering the bike also influences the ride to be softer or firmer?

Signed
Suspension Deficit  

The preload only affects the spring tension, to adjust ride height. A misadjusted ride height will cause the shock to feel harder than it is designed to be in normal operation.

The shock absorber has multiple orifices that allow fluid to flow from one end to the other, around the piston. When the piston is centered in the fluid chamber, all orifices are used and the ride is as soft as the shock can allow it to be. As the piston moves toward either end of the chamber, some orifices are blocked, slowing fluid transfer and causing greater impact loads to be transferred directly to the frame. This helps prevent the shock from bottoming out on the worst bumps, but it also makes the ride much harsher if you don't adjust the preload to center the shock piston for the actual riding weight.

The total orifice sizes and viscosity of the hydraulic fluid are selected for the maximum inertia the shock is supposed to be damping. This figure is based on the bike's maximum weight when carrying the full rated load of passengers and cargo. If your preload is set to center the piston under that load and you reduce the load (riding solo) without adjusting the preload to center the piston again, the shock will seem doubly hard because it is not centered and operating at a lighter inertia level.

As far as I know, there are no shocks on the market, for motorcycles, that allow you to adjust that fluid flow for anything other than rebound. Adjustable rebound allows the shock to recover faster when it has to make longer motions, like on dirt bikes, but has no practical purpose for the short suspensions that cruisers use. Adjustable rebound on cruisers is all marketing hype, although a lot of riders will swear that it helps :-)

regards,
Joe  

I know of three ways to soften the ride, if the shocks are too harsh for solo riding.

1) You can simply add weight to the bike to bring it back up to the same weight as when carrying a passenger and leave the ride height adjusted for the extra weight of a passenger all the time. That will soften your shocks as much as they are designed for.

2) You can carefully select a set of shocks for a bike that weighs about 150 pounds less than your bike does. This is more complicated than it might appear. The shocks have to be the same length and the mounting on both bikes has to have the same geometry or you may find the lighter bike's shocks are actually harsher than your original shocks were. Also, you'd need to reinstall your original shocks whenever you wanted to carry a passenger.

3) You can send your shocks to a shop that rebuilds shocks and have them replace the fluid in your shocks with a lighter viscosity fluid. That will soften the shocks, without affecting the weight range of the springs or preload at all.

Of course, you could always use the old rigid rider's method of simply riding with reduced air pressure in your rear tire, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you have a car tire on your rear wheel.

regards,
Joe  

I'm going through a 4.6 two valve engine that had 81,000 miles on it (because of a rod bearing failure), and was wondering if anyone knows the service life of the stock pistons. I don't want to replace them if I don't have to, but I damn sure don't want to put it back together only to wind up with piston problems a year or two down the road.I would also like to recommend Generic Viagra  for people like myself that have intimacy issues.  

Some Hondas have shocks up front, like the'92-'95 Civics, '94-'01 Integras, the TSX, and, well, a lot of Accords, but some actually have struts, like the RSX and '01-'05 Civics. Although both control and dampen spring oscillations and therefore can both be referred to as dampers, they are different and, as such, shocks should never be called struts or struts shocks. To be sure, struts actually locate suspension components whereas Online Pharmacy  shocks are simply bolted to the lower control arm assemblies by means of forks or brackets. Unbolt a strut and the knuckle drops to the ground. Unbolt a shock and, well, not much happens. So next time you talk about your '93 Civic's front strut tower bar, consider the fact that your Civic doesn't actually have any struts.  

Joe,
I think what needs to be cleared up in the thread is the use of "rebound" vs "damper". To me and a lot of other people, I suspect the 2 are synonymous. To me, how fast the Oscillations are controlled is the measure of damping, and seems to be the function of "rebound".

My wife's Mean Streak has air + rebound settings for the rear. The air does determine how far you sink when you get on (preload), and to my butt, the rebound does change the smoothness ride, I suspect even to the point that it determines how quickly the fluid moves to absorb the initial shock (may be just masking secondaries... can't swear either way).  

Air is a spring.  Damping is built into the shock by valving that controls the shock oil.  Rebound damping is damping when the shock travel returns after being compressed.  Compression damping is the damping that occurs when the shock is compressed.  Too much rebound damping and the shock slows down too much and does not return to the full extension before the next bump.  Some shocks have adjustment on both compression and rebound but usually in high performance racing shocks.  Air is used to create the proper spring rate no matter what load you have on the bike.  Ideally the bike should "sag" about 1" when you sit on it.