Quote:
Originally Posted by Robw#70
my point is that kwak shocks have been bad for years with no consistancy, one will have way too much rebound the next not enough and the same on compression.
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It is quite funny that for a long time the favourite shock for the curvy SV- 03-04 636- was also the absolute worst shock fitted to any of the supersport bikes, by a country mile... Though to be fair, having ridden that 636 and an SV with the shock in, the shock seemed to suit the SV better than the donor bike! I'd like to try this with the more recent 636 shock though.
My advice for any sort of suspension setup is- set the sag right, stick it in the middle, fanny about with everything else. You can get some horrible results with a fully adjustable shock doing this (particularily as for the inexperienced, which is what I am, it's very easy to adjust the wrong setting- for instance mine was squatty so I increased the compression damping, but the problem was that it had far too much rebound damping so the shock would "pack" over bumps and still be compressed from the last one when it hit the next. So, now I had too much rebound AND too much compression damping
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So, if that doesn't sound like fun to you, consider taking it to a pro- but remember a lot of places aren't going to be too happy to work on such a compromised setup.
No matter what, any shock swap like this will always be a compromise, in fact even with a mass produced bike the suspension is always a compromise- and don't think that just because it's adjustable you'll get a perfect setup. The idea of the swas has never been to do it perfectly, it's to do a ?40 job reasonably well. Which I think it does, personally- I have Ohlins and WP shock for the SV but I could be happy enough on a 636 one.