Nitron Piggybacks.

10-1 odds: you’ll have the damping up too high as well 😉
My non-expert advice for basic damping settings: start at minimum (both settings). If it wallows, turn both settings up bit by bit until it doesn’t wallow.
Then stop 👍
 
Yep, that's my next step, so 6mm not enough sag virtually made it a hardtail. My guess is the hard banging was the shocks topping out.
 
The definition of xxx, typically I find myself repeating exactly the same adjustments and still getting hammered. Today I went up and down a few turns of preload and found a sweeter than-before spot. After that, I went up and down on the compression and ended up either fully hard or fully soft with no improvement in comfort. So I went back to the recommended setting at home and for shits and giggles I tried 4 clicks softer on rebound and suddenly I have a much more compliant rear suspension movement. We will see the next ride out. At least I am not walking with a limp anymore.
 
We did an ask-around last club night, seems I am the only one who hasn't had it. Happy to still have 4 shots and be missed SO FAR. From the bloke who spent 20 minutes adjusting the Air Pressures in his Forgornals {sp} so I could get the best effect when I rode your RGS. We are completely different weights. They set the damping in the middle so not much of exactly for me. I have done some reading and viewing and after sag is set the MOST important setting is rebound. It's important to have the shock rebound as fast as possible but with no bounce, It's critical to getting full travel and a comfortable ride but it's hard to see in real life with such small travel available and it's a waste of time adjusting compression till rebound is correct. So
I when I fitted them I set the sag alone, by guessing with the bump stop movement. not good practice and then softening compression hoping for more compliance and not getting it. I am hoping to see a better result with all the compression back to the middle and 4 clicks softer than the std rebound. It now allows the back of the bike to move with a big hand push down approx 50mm and that wasn't happening before, it would hardly move. So I will see on the next ride.
 
Still struggling with this but I got a couple of hints from very different sources recently. I sent an email to the local distributor about what circles I am spinning in. He relied with a very short comment, hopefully, more soon. He asked what the spring length was with its preload set. I have the preload set at 30mm or 1/3 of the full 90mm of available travel and have been playing with the compression damping to adjust bottoming shown with a cable tie on the shock shaft but with very limited effect. I am getting nowhere doing this. The bike holds a line in corners fine but is very uncomfortable and it's hard to understand why. Too hard or too soft feel very similar comfort-wise. So by chance, I watched this video the other day and it made a lot of sense, whats pretty shocking, small pun, is it's on setting up adjustable shocks on HARLEYS. Crazy hun. What they recommend is instead of using damping adjustments to fix bottoming you use preload adjustments breaking the 1/3 sag rule. So what I am going to do is return all the damping to what the shocks came set at and add 3 full turns to the preload adjusting it so it loses travel and go to a bumpy road and slowly reduce preload till it uses all its travel but just avoids bottoming. This will prove interesting considering that spring-length comment from the National Distributor.
 
Knife edge compliant suspension and comfort are two different things Vince, you will never have both…
Not on a 3c Laverda anyway
 
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It's got to be better than how it's working comfort-wise now. There is a stretch of Concrete based Expressway around Buladela we did recently that produces a high-frequency oscillation, similar to corrugations that had everything bouncing including my eyeballs. Like I said the bike tracks bumpy bends very well, I just need to find the sweet spot between bottoming and topping out. It handles hot mix blacktop fine. Its worth a try anyway.
 
Very first impressions of my Nitron piggies? Set to the suggested default starting settings, on rat-arsed suburban roads with tram lines and holes and grates everywhere, they feel very compliant but not spongy at all. Bloody awesome I'd say. They're set up for a Lav triple (longer than std SF) to help counter the slight loss of height with 17 inch wheels. No idea what spring weight they are - and with no accounting for my weight or shock geometry, which are laid quite forward. Feeling very optimistic. The OW01 front end with SKF low stiction seals is also feeling great on recommended Yamaha base settings.

Obviously some serious hard riding ahead to really show up the need for any adjustments. Hoping to have rego tomoz.
 
Full rego or historic. Any comments re modifications? I am really keen to try that preload thing on my shocks, I think not enough preload and getting away from the recommended damping setting to try that as a preload fix was tieing the shocks in knots. Following that 1/3 sag rule too closely I hope was the issue. Hope I get a better result trying another way.
 
I finally got back to this today so I don't fiddle constantly on this coming weekend ride. The new plan is to set the preload much harder and back off till it is just off bottoming instead of setting the preload at 1/3 of full travel. So I went up 6 full turns expecting a rock-hard ride with way less travel, this is with just me and no panniers and what do I get after adding a full petrol tank but a pretty comfortable ride and the cable tie showing 5mm off full travel. No wonder it was so uncomfortable it must have been constantly bottoming before. I will add a bit more preload to the spring, maybe 1 1/2 turns more for the panniers go on for this weekend's 2-day ride, BTW that includes one road with a big reputation of rough as guts. Bylong Valley Way. I kind of wish I was taking the Atlas but not till I fix that rear suspension limit of travel thing. So months of mucking about with damping settings now back to the delivered setup and the problem is fixed with 30 minutes of setting the spring preload. The shock manual needs another clause to cover this.
 
I just added another 3 full turns of rear spring preload, it must be close to 10 more in total after trying this to avoid shock bottoming. I added the fully loaded panniers and tried doing a hard seat bounce. That shows 15mm off bottoming and felt pretty good, Sunday's ride will be interesting. If this works I will reduce preload a half a turn till I get close to full travel.
 
Are you sure you have the correct spring rate? I'm reading through Fast Bike Gear's suspension setup manual atm and I'm going to go through the process step by step. Interesting to read how important it is to set up your suspension to cope with dips in the road (ie suspension extension) rather concentrating on travel and bumpstops. Hitting the bumpstop on the odd occasion is fine rather than setting your rate so high it compromises compliance on the other 99% of your riding.
 
It has so little travel to work with, so Sunday will be interesting. That's the whole point of SAG, it has to be able to move up or down. I supplied my weight when I bought them but who knows what springs are in them, that's NOT listed on the build sheet, not happy that's not noted. It's a long supply chain so guess who I ordered them from, then the local distributor, Shocks Are Us had a sticker on the box they came in plus there apparently made to order by the Factory. The consequences of my research have a spring rate for me around 2.4 to 2.6 or similar. It is a bit concerning as to how far I am getting on spring preload and it's still bottoming more than I want. BTW I don't mind if it's an occasional thump, but when it nearly knocks the wind out of you. Really.
 
Upright shocks or laid fwd a la later 3CLs and Jotas, Vince? Mine are angled quite fwd as I have shock mounts set forward for the original Lav swinger but the custom swinger is 45mm longer and the shock mounts are probably 30mm further rearward.

I'm yet to really play with it other than reducing comp and rebound 2 clicks from the default settings recommended by Nitron as a starting point. I noticed the diff immediately on bumpy roads. Did the same to the forks. I'm guessing setup will mean continuing down that path until it's too soft then going back into Goldilocks land.

Spring rate needs to be done first, front and rear. None of this can really be done on city roads and in 50kph limits!
 
Vertical old-style shock mounts, Sundays ride starts on the legendary Old Rd, then moves to the fast sweeping Petes Ridge section and then onto Wallemi Rd which is an 80kph limited road that's pretty remote, still gets the occasional touring Cop presence and is notorious for its challenging road surface. Home of the now not-so-bad LEMMINGS Corner. It used to be a shocker, downhill off camber with a sight line that sucked in the unwary to suddenly realise there going in HOT. It used to have the remanence of dozens of broken bike bits on the other side of its very dented Armco. Even with a huge warning sign plenty crashed there, recently it was widened and opened up and it's much safer now. I am hoping the shocks are now beyond where they bottom too much finally and I can back off the preload a bit at a time.
 
Still sounds like you need firmer springs to me - preload should be for setting up sag and ride height from what I understand. But seems like you're onto it, Vince. Good luck on the ride - keep ahead of the fuzz!
 
Better, considerably better. Very good on smooth roads, I softened the high-speed compression 3 clicks and that took out a hell of a lot of the square-edged chatter making it much more comfortable, but what I did notice was that was the first time a relatively small damping change made a very noticeable difference. Heading home it's still bottoming more than I liked on huge craters, but it's so much closer to a bearable ride on our goat tracks. There are a lot of really long fairly high-speed bumpy bends out there and it's holding a line much better, it used to get horribly lively on those bends. My back is feeling fine as well.
 
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