2011 First Farkle - Suspension

It's 2011 and I have clocked 23,000km on the bike in 6 months.....and you thought that I'd leave the bike alone huh? Well fat chance. 

OK confession time, normally this is where you'll hear lines such as:

A) "my riding has improved and I feel that my suspension is not keeping up" or 

B) "I feel I need to make the change in order to feel more of what the tyres and the bike is doing"

as means and/or justification for the change.

Let me just say it straight.....that's just utter rubbish. The truth is, I have little(if any and if I'm feeling generous towards myself) or no skills whatsoever and as such decided to plonk on an aftermarket rear shocks to assist in keeping the bike upright. If you've never heard of YSS Suspension you can check them out here.

YSS vs stock....it's beefier

All CNC'd nicely

Nice rebound adjustment vs stock

Straight out of the box, you can see that it's well constructed and machined, the pistons and springs are larger vs stock which means it'll take longer to heat up and faster to cool down when it's working hard. You can only adjust the preload and rebound rate, there's no compression adjustment, though that's fine with me, cause the more I can adjust the higher the chances for me to screw it up.

I managed to install this in time for my Golok-Betong ride (report coming up later), and my first impression is that it feels firmer than stock though at no time was the ride hard or jarring. It did take me a while to tweak the settings as I had my panniers on, but once I got it right it was saaaweeeet!

Definitely happy with the first farkle of the year.