Shock spring rate?

In the Shed
1

The old girl is up on the bench for some winter TLC.
I’ve been finding the shock is a bit firm for my weight so took it off tonight for a look, it is a French EMC shock with one knob to control both comp and rebound damping which does have an effect but the sag is just to small.
While cleaning the shock a small sticker fell off the spring saying 17.4kg, so am assuming that the spring rate is 17.4kg/mm.
I’ve tried to search the forum for spring rates but not found much.

Does anyone have any info on spring rates with rider weights etc.

Any help much appreciated.

2

I installed a YSS rear Suspension. That has an 180 N / mm spring. First it felt too soft due to missing preload. So I made a test and compared it with the original Showa one. Both have nearly the same spring rate. With correct preload settings it runs fine (single rider).

100g has 1 N so your spring is near to factory settings.

1 Like
3

Ok, cheers, but can I ask what your kitted up riding weight is ?

4

Hi Bart, here’s a pic of the document that came with my wilbers shock, it has all the spring pre load settings etc,
Spring rate 170 newtons per mm
Spring length 185mm.
25mm pre load.
My rider weight when I ordered this shock was 13.5 stone.
20190208_062817

5

Here is the Spring put on my DMR custom order’d shock (for VF1000Fe).

You’ll have to do the conversion.

It was a little soft at Position 0 (or is it “1”).
Had to click PreLoad up to the middle (Position 4, or 5) and is just right (No Luggage, 180lb rider(“Pork Chop”)).

6

Just realised I had not replied to the above, thanks for the replies/help.

In the end I went for a new YSS shock, it came with a 180 spring, have fitted it on the bike but have not used it yet…finger crossed it is better.

7

Just to finish this.

The new shock is working well, I’ve maxed out the shock length to gain rear ride height and it is more compliant than the old shock so overall very pleased. Had a bit of luggage on last weekend for the Vf’s first overnight trip and it rode better with luggage so maybe a bit less spring rate would be better but it will do for now.

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Hi bart, nice to hear you have got the rear suspension sorted, I have a yes on the rear of my boldor, I ended up taking all the pre load off it but it was still a bit too stiff for me, I ended up eventually having the spring changed, although there was some confusion as to weather the spring was 180 or 200, mine came from firefox racing on Ebay, let’s just say the buying experience wasn’t great …