RF900 rear shock swap

[mystahagy]

Hi all,

If you saw the RF900 shock that Waltari was selling, I bought it. BWAHAHAHA.... ok well anyways I put it on and here's a few pictures. I put the reservior on the left rail under the seat, so compression adjustments aren't visible but can be made by lifting the seat. I'm still working on all the settings to get it just right, but that's the reason I got it in the first place, to have those adjustments. I am having difficulty getting the rear height back down to normal though. That think you put the spanner thingy on is on the 3rd setting out of 7. I'm not sure if it's ideal to put that setting lower, or what effect it might have. Anyways, here's some pics...

[mystahagy]

Here's some more...

[Black_peter]

Nice!
You know my 95 750 has this strange
bracket under the seat the looks just right
for the res.. But it looked awkward..

Hows it feel??

[mystahagy]

Right now the compression is set really soft, so as you can imagine it's like a cadillac. I haven't really gotten to heavy into turning the Kat's suspension, but now I can adjust the compression. Suspension tuning is fairly new to me, but the little adjustments I've made have made a world of difference, now hopefully I can go beyond the limitations of that old school shock. Another thing, while just sitting there with the bike and getting down on the rear suspension, the compression of the suspension feels much smoother. The old shock used to have a squeaky pssst sound to it too.

This reservior is new to me also. I've got lots of learnin' to do on it, such as that schrader valve on the rear. What's that all about? With the new shock, it'll just take time and learning to feel what the suspension is doing and make the correct adjustments.

I'm wanting to figure out how to safely put my rear height back to normal. It sits about an inch higher, and the bike turns much more aggressively. If the higher rear is just the nature of the beast, that'll be fine also.

[Black_peter]

ummmm you arnt at home right now... are you??

[mystahagy]

Yeah I'm at home. We thought we might take a direct hit, so we headed down to Brownsville yesterday. After seeing that the storm was headed north, my family headed back. Now it's forecast that we won't even get any rain. I hope everyone is gonna be fine by the TX/LA border, ya'll hold on.

[md86]

http://sportrider.com/tech/suspension/

http://sportrider.com/tech/146_9508_tech/

Any help ?

[Black_peter]

Cool links MD.. I gotta check my sag I guess you start there huh??

[mystahagy]

hey thanks for those links. I'll use them today to help me get things set up.

[Black_peter]

Let me know about how you measured sag..
I'm probibly solo on that....

We had the "Bush" come and visit yesterday..
Lucky us.. My boy and I watched an F16 harrass a
piper cub.. I thought it was gonna shoot it down..
NOT the kinda thing want my 8 year old to see..

[md86]

Yeah , every article I've read says to start with the static sag , and it takes at LEAST one extra set of hands . I'd kinda like to do mine sometime , but I got enough OTHER stuff to take care of . It's on the list , though .

[mystahagy]

I didn't get a chance to check my static sag yesterday, but here's what I plan to do. Take a flat piece of plastic and wedged it under my seat so it sticks straight out horizontally. Then I'm gonna hang one of those long cloth reel measuring tapes from the garage door supports. The piece of plastic will be my measuring point and will be visible both while standing over the bike and sitting down on it, so I won't need someone eyeballing it for me. Maybe someone would still be needed to hold the bike up while I got in the riding position with feet up like shown on one of those magazines, but oh well I should be ok just using my feet to keep the bike balanced.

[Black_peter]

I'm interested in that too..
I'm thinking of using some sort of stick and a ring or something.. So that when I sit on the bike it pushes the ring up the stick and it stays.
This way I can even get my feet on the pegs long enough for the "measurement".
I'll post some pics if I come up with a method that works..