Strange shock behaviour

[BuzzardNZ]

No that is not neccessarily so. When the shock is lying idle ( the bike not being used ) most of the nitrogen gas will be at the top of the shock, it will demulsify out of the oil. If there is any leakage path out of the top of the shock it can lose gas pressure without passing oil. Also in my experience emulsion shocks can lose gas pressure with no discernible loss of oil The other very real possibility is that there is a loss of compression dampening because the shims may no longer have enough seat pressure or there is a distorted or fractured shim. Really the shock should come completely apart and such components inspected. As to who is liable is up to everyone to haggle among themselves.
But as other people have eluded to in more brutal terms, the said shock cost a certain amount of money and what was recieved was commensurate with that amount of money. In fairness we from time to time have the odd warranty issue and even when its ''grey'' in terms of the circumstances we err in favour of the customer
We could dyno the shock for the rider but of course there has to be a charge because of our considerable investment in striving to provide a totally proffessional suspension service.

Welcome back, but odd that you should show your face after this ( coincidence I wonder )...

http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...ts-to-cheating

[F5 Dave]

Ahh welcome back Robert, you have been missed here.

[Robert Taylor]

Haha you said SHIT not me. They really are CRAPO shocks that some one is making a fortune of selling, with no regard for the crap that they are. What bike is on mate. The FACT that it has done what is done already, tells me the service should be free of charge! Or next step is contact the importer directly and ellaborate on the crap product. I personally believe in PENSKE shocks streight out of the box as they come. The internal build quality of a Penske shock is = or above any other over priced brand name on the world wide market place. I have seen a race lap record broken at Pukekohe a few years back with the shock exactually as per manufactured with correct spring rate and my final settings and sags done for the rider. And that shock was 100% as DELIVERED and fitted from the manufacture, NO need to fuk around and pull it in out and courier to some one to up speck according to what there computor data tells them to do. I am an ex rider racer, so have the feel that no one else in this country has apart from Ray Clee and his white power shocks, and have an awsome reference from one supplier in this country re my set up skills and understanding of how suspension really works.

NO ONE in this country is making a fortune out of selling suspension, especially given very aggressive competition from offshore resellers working on extremely tiny margins. Of course these resellers dont plough their profits back into our local economy, they dont employ Kiwis and are insulated by distance if there are issues, which too often there are.

Yes Penske shocks are excellent quality and performance with some clever ideas but WP, Ohlins and now Nitron are at least equal in quality and have their fair share of clever ideas. WPs elliptical forks that are dong such a stellar job in Moto 2 being a prime example.

Lets take a recent example of ''straight out of the box'' in NZ. 3 weeks before the final Taupo round of the 15 NZSBK nationals we went testing there with Jaden Hassan. We had a complete set of forks ready to interchange that had the worlds only set of prototype Nitron brand cartridges in it. When installed the bike was instantly 0.5 seconds per lap faster. So going by the methodology of what has been said these were ''straight out of the box''. The reality is we had spent in excess of 90 hours over the previous winter building, perfecting and dyno developing these cartridges before they even went to a track. Of course Penske very much embrace laboratory dyno testing and so do their indycar teams who use their equipment. Each team will have mobile dynos in their rigs and a dedicated suspension engineer who will endlessly be changing internal and external settings. So for anyone at all to infer that everything is always a land of milk and honey ''out of the box'' is just plain wrong, there is ALWAYS scope for further improvement and a dedicated / committed race engineer will always be looking for that.
I remember several years ago Ben Perese ditching his ''out of the box'' Penske at Pukekohe because the settings in it didnt get on with that track. So in the absence of a Penske engineer he ran Ohlins, to better effect. Of course given time the Penske could have been revalved and the Ohlins could have been made better as well. But also of course such service would have been expected for free on the assumption that profits were so huge from just sales that such service could be free...................
Any suspension irrespective of pedigree is only as good as its settings and the tenacity of any suspension engineer to get the very best out of it. In Jaden Hassans case we knew that from that first test we could make it work better again and of course that was emphatically proven at the Taupo round. Also relevant to this he was running settings inside his Ohlins rear shock that havent fundamentally changed for 3 years. That doesnt mean it was perfect as nothing ever is

[Robert Taylor]

Welcome back, but odd that you should show your face after this ( coincidence I wonder )...

http://www.kiwibiker.co.nz/forums/sh...ts-to-cheating

I can assure you this is total coincidence and if some people dont believe that Im not going to lose any sleep re same.

If this has given the owner of the said shock some direction of what it may be ( gas pressure loss as reasonably asserted by Shaun or loss of compression seat pressure ) then its all good.

[BuzzardNZ]

I can assure you this is total coincidence and if some people dont believe that Im not going to lose any sleep re same.

If this has given the owner of the said shock some direction of what it may be ( gas pressure loss as reasonably asserted by Shaun or loss of compression seat pressure ) then its all good.

I don't believe it.

That "I cheated" thread was the best one ever on KB ( i'm sure many will agree ) and it fucking sucks that it's gone and that you're back to be honest!

[nzspokes]

Ahh welcome back Robert, you have been missed here.

+1

[Robert Taylor]

I don't believe it.

That "I cheated" thread was the best one ever on KB ( i'm sure many will agree ) and it fucking sucks that it's gone and that you're back to be honest!

Really I dont care whether you believe it or not. I offered another very real possibility of why the shock had lost its dynamic ride height control. If that gives the owner a very plausible argument to help in seeking redress then thats very positive.
And into the bargain I spent time illustrating that in general ''out of the box'' is such a misleading marketing line
Alas, as is so common on accursed forums this could open pandoras box. Just evidence the 90 or so hours spent on developing some cartridges with no inclination to go near this forum, look how productive that was!!!! Tonight I got curious and spotted some errors. And at no time did I give any indication of being ''back'', whatever that means

[Kickaha]

I don't believe it.

That "I cheated" thread was the best one ever on KB ( i'm sure many will agree ) and it fucking sucks that it's gone and that you're back to be honest!

It's only gone because the fuckhead that created it had it taken down

[BuzzardNZ]

It's only gone because the fuckhead that created it had it taken down

I wonder if he'll chime in explaining why he did that?

[F5 Dave]

That's a great idea let's start that shitfest again and we're back to this thread section being a shadow of itself and our senior technical advisor being Drew. No real offence to Drew but even he would agree.

[Robert Taylor]

In lieu of anyone at all using overly emotive and over simplistic statements such as suspension products being overpriced ( and a number of examples do abound ) its worth noting that just this last week iconic Italian suspension manufacturer Marzocchi closed its doors, with 120 job losses.
Marzocchi found it increasingly difficult to be profitable and indeed have been making losses. Also with the electronic revolution now a part of the suspension world there was an unwillingness from its backers to place huge amounts of money into r&d to be part of that, with no guarantees ofstrong returns.
Personally I will miss some of their higher end products because in certain aspects of design they had some clever engineering

[nzspokes]

In lieu of anyone at all using overly emotive and over simplistic statements such as suspension products being overpriced ( and a number of examples do abound ) its worth noting that just this last week iconic Italian suspension manufacturer Marzocchi closed its doors, with 120 job losses.
Marzocchi found it increasingly difficult to be profitable and indeed have been making losses. Also with the electronic revolution now a part of the suspension world there was an unwillingness from its backers to place huge amounts of money into r&d to be part of that, with no guarantees ofstrong returns.
Personally I will miss some of their higher end products because in certain aspects of design they had some clever engineering

I believe part of their demise was shifting the bicycle component manufacturing to Asia. It became unreliable after that.

[Bassmatt]

No that is not neccessarily so. When the shock is lying idle ( the bike not being used ) most of the nitrogen gas will be at the top of the shock, it will demulsify out of the oil. If there is any leakage path out of the top of the shock it can lose gas pressure without passing oil. Also in my experience emulsion shocks can lose gas pressure with no discernible loss of oi[.

Well the bike sat for nearly three months when I was sick so that seems a likely explanation to me.
I had the shock off the bike on the weekend and noticed if i shook it i could hear the oil sloshing around - it didn't sound like there was a lot of space in there. Should I be able to hear it?

[Robert Taylor]

Well the bike sat for nearly three months when I was sick so that seems a likely explanation to me.
I had the shock off the bike on the weekend and noticed if i shook it i could hear the oil sloshing around - it didn't sound like there was a lot of space in there. Should I be able to hear it?

Absolutely not!

[Bassmatt]

Two questions before I head into battle.
is it still safe to ride and will I do any damage to it if I did ride? Apart from issues mentioned in the op it feels pretty stable.
thanks everyone.