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Seperating spring rate and damping

Kornphlake

Turbo Monkey
Oct 8, 2002
2,632
1
Portland, OR
I suppose I could sell this idea to some company and make more money than DW (as if that were a lot,) but I'm not really sure it's an advantage...

The idea is to ditch coil over springs wrapped around the damper and put the spring somewhere else, use leaf springs, torsion springs, whatever's clever but put it on some linkage so that it optomizes the spring rate, now put the damper in some other location so that the damping rate isn't tied directly to the spring rate. It seems like you could take a bike like a RM 7 with an insanely high spring rate and move the damper to a seperate linkage to lower the damping rate and reduce blown shocks but keep the same suspension feel.

Would this work? Has it already been done?
 

scottishmark

Turbo Monkey
May 20, 2002
2,121
22
Somewhere dark, cold & wet....
Scott DH bike from a few years back (well '99 ish) had a seperate springing and damping unit. They both looked like damper but supposedly the spring one was just a hollow tube, and the damper itself was just a normal shock without a spring. And for whatever reason, those bikes made an awful noise!
 

dw

Wiffle Ball ninja
Sep 10, 2001
2,943
0
MV
Its really not necessary with a shock and leverage rate progression that are tuned to work together. The trick is knowing what to do to make them work together.

I have apicture of that Scott bike somewhere. It also had an adjustable HT angle. Definitely a cool bike to look at.

dw
 

dw

Wiffle Ball ninja
Sep 10, 2001
2,943
0
MV
scottishmark said:
crazy moto seat option too iirc. ws one of those bike that made you stop n stare at the time though (and probably still would)
yeah, totally. It made me stop and look. and think.
 

Nately27

Monkey
Jul 29, 2003
121
0
Kornphlake said:
I suppose I could sell this idea to some company and make more money than DW (as if that were a lot,) but I'm not really sure it's an advantage...

The idea is to ditch coil over springs wrapped around the damper and put the spring somewhere else, use leaf springs, torsion springs, whatever's clever but put it on some linkage so that it optomizes the spring rate, now put the damper in some other location so that the damping rate isn't tied directly to the spring rate. It seems like you could take a bike like a RM 7 with an insanely high spring rate and move the damper to a seperate linkage to lower the damping rate and reduce blown shocks but keep the same suspension feel.

Would this work? Has it already been done?
i.e. this motorcycle:

I believe they designed this motorcyle to have a falling shock rate, to increase compliance at excessive lean angles, and a rising spring rate, or at least linear. although I could be mistaken, its been a while since ive read the articles.