Load limits 4 Nighthawk - Page 3

 Albrecht wrote:


Progressive Suspension uses progressively wound springs and prospective
customers *ass*ume that a progressively wound spring will somehow magically
provide a better overall ride quality just because the spring is
progressively wound.

They have no idea what the range of spring rates is, whether it's a true
progressive or a dual rate spring, they buy the kit because one of the riding
buddies says *he* bought a set.

Ya know what I mean, Vern?

So you have this spring with a bunch of obviously closely wound coils at one
end, and that instruction sheet says to discard the thin sheet metal spacer
and drop the spring into the forktube.

You notice that about two inches of the spring sticks out of the top of the
tube, but you go ahead and install the spring and the recommended volume of
fork oil into the tube and you force the spring and the cap into place.

The closest-wound coils on the end of the progressively wound spring simply
compress and effectively become a very thick preload spacer, taking up some
of the air space the OEM suspension engineers wanted.

How "progressive" are collapsed coils? There is *zero* progression in the
collapsed coils, so how does *that* help ride quality?

You try to pump the fork to circulate the oil and and discover that the fork
hydraulically locks when it reaches only half stroke. With the excessively
long spring in the fork, there's just that much less room for oil and air.

So you pull the fork cap out and remove two ounces of oil and reinstall the
fork cap with great effort.

By now, you're getting disgusted with your purchase. You pump the forks up
and down and notice that you're getting more travel. You measure the travel
and discover that you're getting an inch less travel than the magazine
articles say
the fork is supposed to have.

So you remove the fork caps again, with the tire suspended off the floor. You
remove the oil dripping springs from the forks and you measure the distance
from the lower triple tree to the dust seal on one fork leg.

You lower the front end of the bike and remeasure. You discover that all of
the magazine articles are *wrong*, the forks have 1 inch less travel than the
literature indicates.

You have a fork spring that occupies more volume than the stock spring and
you
look down into the fork and see that the remaining oil level just covers the
top of the damper rod and you decide to reinstall the springs and test ride
the bike with what you've got.

Years later, you discover the Progressive spring catalog online. You discover
that the several different part number springs which Progressive makes
supposedly fit several different different motorcycles with different
diameter fork tubes and different length strokes.

And you read the installation notes and Progressive tells you that they don't
have specific information on every model their springs might possibly be used
on.

They don't know, they never tested their springs in every possible motorcycle
that the springs might fit.

Instead, they give you a ball park figure for oil level of about 5 or 6
inches below the top of the fork tube with the tubes collapsed.

--
Message posted via MotorcycleKB.com
http://www.motorcyclekb.com/Uwe/Forums.aspx/bike/200708/1

 

Much over the 350 lbs might be a little much.

My wife and I ran around on ours, with me at 210+ and her at 130 and had a
lot of fun.  The weights I listed are without leathers and helmet weight.
I've sold the bike, but as I recall 350 was very close to its limit if not
right at it.  I want to say the bike weighed 389 lbs dry and had a gross
limit that allowed 350 lb more load.  The suspension might bottom out on
large bumps, but it will work.

It was a fun bike,
Robert

 Mike Jenkins wrote:

Motorcycles can be cheap transportation if...you buy an inexpensive
reliable machine and...you have the knowledge and desire to do the
routine maintenance yourself.  Otherwise, as others pointed out, the
savings in gas get eaten up by maintenance costs.  For a mid-90s Honda,
you just about have to maintain it yourself anyway since most dealers
don't want their service techs to work on a bike more than a few years
old.  Also, I wouldn't trust most techs at dealers to work on my bike
anyway.  My experience is that they don't bother to use a torque wrench,
don't put things together very carefully, don't inspect things to be
sure they're in good shape, etc.  YMMV.

--
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and Sea Monkey 1.5a