Shocking

A few months ago, I pulled the Ohlins out of my Vtec and swapped in a 5th gen Wilbers. I was looking for the high and low compression damping, and the Wilbers kinda fell in my lap a few years ago. Unfortunately, the spring it came with (59/59-160-160) was horribly soft.

Baileyrock to the rescue with a 1250# Hyperco spring... :)

Gotta tell ya, you haven't lived till you've precariously squeezed a big spring in a vice! I have a Race Tech spring compressor, but it doesn't work with short springs like this. Cue up the danger... lol. One side of the spring in the vice, car coil compressor on the other side, and a ratchet strap to keep it anchored in the vice. Worked out well, and thankfully the new spring was shorter, so it needed minimal compression to slip the retainer back in.

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Total time from start to finish, 2hrs 10min including spring change and tool cleanup... test ride was GREAT. Looking forward to a longer ride in the future.

Awesome job with the vise!

Hopefully it is a Wilbers that has adequate damping and not one from the group buy. 

It was not from a group buy. Damping feels pretty good right now but I still need to put some miles on my favorite local roads and fiddle with the knobs.

Nice work mate.

I pay someone else to do stuff like that! I don't like messing with big springs...

Aye captain, that is a dangerous endavour!

So what specs are the other spring?

It's a 1250# spring.

Ah... The wilbers was a 60, this a 125?

I'm not sure how the numbers on the Wilbers break down. I do know it was ridiculously soft. The Hyperco spring is marked 1250-1262#/in

The Wilbers from the group buy were all over the board. None that I am aware of had the rear spring rate that was spec'ed during the group buy (all were as soft or softer than stock VFR) and none of the valving was up to par for the stock spring rate.

I don't recall how to decipher their numbers now.  I just tossed the shock across the yard and then handed it to Traxxion a couple years later to correct.

This is my second Wilbers. I have one in my streetfighter as well. Both are nicely made, work well when set up properly, and I bought both at used prices, so a bargain to boot.

My CB and the turbo gixxer have Ohlins shocks, and they are very nice, but lack the compression damping I wanted to try. One of these days the TTX shocks will drop in price a bit (I hope!), would like to set one of those up in a project.

Yes I pulled the Ohlins out of mine and replaced it with a Nitron to get High/Low Speed Compression adjustment as well.