Quote:
Originally Posted by
lankyrider (Post 216488)
Once loaded up it sounds like the progressive fork won't be much use to me. Would mixing and matching make sense - Ohlins forks and a hyper pro shock spring at the back?
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It is fine to mix and match. As I mention early in this thread, I�ve tried both linear and progressive springs back to back at the front and rear and came to the conclusion that linear front (Ohlins) and progressive rear (Yacugar/Hyperpro) was the way forward for me at 85Kg in full kit.
As you suggest, progressive front springs tend to get �light� and a bit slow to react to bumps and corrugations when there is a lot of weight (luggage, pillion etc.) towards the back of the bike. Theoretically, the main advantage of a progressive rate spring is that as load increases the spring effectively stiffens saving a lot of fiddling about adjusting preload to suit a range of conditions. Now this works fine on the rear as additional load/weight acts downwards (the way you�d expect it to) on the spring/shock and the progressive stiffening works in your favour. However on the front it works in reverse; the more you load up the bike, the more you tip the weight distribution rearward, the lighter the spring rate gets so you end up riding in the softest part of the forks stroke and with SAE15 oil (typical of progressive installations) in the forks this means they become over damped and sluggish to react.
Everybody has their own take on how they want their bike to handle and have very different needs in terms of luggage carrying, pillions and road/trail conditions, so the best piece of advice I can give is experiment. You won�t know what you like or works for you until you�ve tried out several permutations� which unfortunately can get expensive! ;)
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