rear shocks too stiff

[bwringer]

...Some stiffer boingers might be right up my alley...

You just got married and you already need stiffer boingers?

[MikeJ]

Hagon shocks in the US of A are sold by a nice gent named Dave Quinn.

Call Dave (using an old-fashioned voice device called a "tele-phone") and after a brief personal chat regarding your weight, bike, riding style, and credit card number, he'll put together a pair of shocks with damping and spring rates perfect for you and your bike.

Starting at about $200, more if you want fancy adjustments and such. Wotta deal!

http://www.davequinnmotorcycles.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/Hagon.html

Thank you sir. Mr. Dave just may get a call from me...

[MikeJ]

Mike, If you do end up selling those S&W, I might be interested. Im not a small lad, and, while my wife is rather small, the two of us and gear make for a bit of a load on my 1000G. Some stiffer boingers might be right up my alley...

The S&Ws are now off, and the OEM shocks are on the bike, and actually, for the time being at least I am pretty happy with the OEM. I understand they may wear out quicker and their boinging will get weaker but right now they feel just right.

You can see pix of the S&W shocks mounted on my bike (the way it looked when I bought it) if you go to my profile album on GSR, and I just uploaded another album with pix of the S&W shocks as they look now, off the bike. There is a little black paint chipping on the upper eyelet of one of them, and some of the blue paint has chipped off of the upper spring retaining ring and also some blue paint chipped off of the preload adjuster. There is a little bit of surface rust visible on one of the piston rods, the other one appears pretty clean. Other than that, each assembly is clean and functionally like new, if stiff is what you're looking for. The springs are powder-coated black and not chipped or rusted at all. re is some apparently meaningful marking on the springs, decipherable by those in the know, maybe? Which doesn't include me. 4 or 5 loops of the spring are marked with small dots of paint (about 1/8" diameter each) in a sequence white, brown, white. You can see it in the pix. I'm guessing that marking is a symbol indicating the spring rate or something.

The springs do seem to be the heavy-duty version which may be ideal for your 2-up riding with luggage, and if they're too stiff for you and you don't like 'em, you can turn around and sell 'em to another GSer with an even heavier bike/load.

I have no idea what they're worth. While I do my due diligence and research the issue, feel free to either drop me a PM or reply on the forum if you want to make an offer. If we can reach a fair bargain you get first shot. Otherwise, I'll probably put them up on the GSR parts-for-sale forum as well as Ebay and Craigslist.

[MikeJ]

So, I'm going out to install my new-old $9 pair of OEM shocks now. If I survive the test ride, I will report back here on how they feel compared to the S&Ws I'm (at least temporarily) taking off. I will do a before-and-after test ride just to be sure it's fresh in my mind. Also, I will test my theory about kick-starting while in gear (on the center stand, don't want the bike to run away with me) from that other thread over in the general discussion group. 8*)

Test ride survived. Pre-change, the S&Ws felt stiff as ever, jouncing my kidneys when I drove over a manhole cover, pothole, ripples, or anything like that. Why I started this thread in the first place.

Then, park the bike and make the switch - a very easy job, undo 4 capnuts, slide off the old shocks, slide on the replacements, make sure all the spacers and washers are back where they came from, re-tighten the 4 nuts. Including gathering the tools for the job, it took about 10 minutes.

Post-change test ride - gingerly at first, but the OEM shocks felt planted and firm, yet compliant over bumps and ripples. Much easier on the old gut. Purposely sought out manhole covers, potholes, etc. to run over, and had a much more comfortable ride over those imperfections. Ride was short, but the bike felt firmly planted when turning, no noticeable shakes or wobbles. I was overall very pleased with the change. Maybe, after some more extensive testing, I will notice shortcomings that will make me want to seek out some Hagons or Progressives, but for now, the OEMs will stay on the bike.

Two other unexpected results of the shock changeover -

(1) the clutch appeared less "catchy." I'm not sure why that would be, unless it has something to do with the softer springing allowing the rear shocks to "set" a little bit more to absorb more of the initial shock as the clutch begins to take up. Does that make sense? Anyway, I'm much happier with the clutch operation now too - that was one of the complaints I had when the bike first came to me, the clutch felt grabby. Maybe that was just because I was effectively riding a hardtail.

(2) The bike seemed much easier to put up onto its centerstand, more evenly balanced. This may be due to the S&W shocks being slightly shorter than the OEMs - the S&Ws were about 325 mm from center-to-center of the mounting holes, and the OEMs were about 335 mm long. That 10 mm difference is probably what did it.

Oh, yeah - the kickstart issue? After putting the bike back on its centerstand, I empirically discovered that a 1978 GS550 _will_ kickstart just fine with the bike _in_gear_; it does not have to be in neutral for the kickstarter to turn over the engine, but of course, if the bike is in gear, the kickstarter is turning over not only the engine, but the entire drivetrain, all the way back to the rear wheel. But, it starts.