Stuff-mo-tron

Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Tue, 27 Jun 2006

Ah, sometimes I even crack myself up. (Yes, I should probably be shot for punning.)

I called up the US distributor for Hagon shocks this morning, and asked him about a shock for the Ninja 250. I know I'm going to get one, it's just a matter of sorting out which one at this point.

So far, I have the following choices:

Works Performance Steel Tracker: this shock is the oldest tech of any of my choices, using a system called a ball check-valve to achieve damping. According to one of the people on the Ninja 250 board, these shocks are to be avoided at all costs, possibly even being a step backward from the stock shock. Everyone else seems fine with them. Models to fit the 250 are $350 for the preload-only model, $430 for the rebound and preload model, and $500 for the fully-adjustable model. I was inclining toward either the $350 or $500 version, depending on how cheap I was feeling.
Penske 8900 series: These are reputed to be excellent shocks, but they carry a price tag to match: $800 and up. Nice thing about them is that if you buy one, you can take it with you from bike to bike with relatively minor investments since the whole thing is modular. I'm not sure how much I buy that, particularly going from the 250 to some other bike, since they're likely to require significantly different specs. This is on my radar, but really too expensive to be considered seriously. Unless I win the lottery or something.
Ohlins: I don't even know what model would fit, because these things start at $1100 and go up from there. No way I'm spending that kind of money on a shock for a $3000 bike.
Hagon: These shocks have a decent reputation. They use shim-stack damping, so they're more current-tech than the Works, but they're still emulsion shocks rather than the fancier pressurized reservoir system. Of course, Ohlins will sell you an emulsion shock for $1100 too, so it's not as if emulsion is a terrible thing. For $435 max, it's hard to see what's wrong with these.
Bitubo XZE: I haven't actually talked to anyone about this shock yet, but Bitubo lists the GPZ 500, which is the same thing as the EX500, which uses either a similar or identical shock to the Ninja 250. Whew! In any case, it means Bitubo at least makes a shock which will physically fit in the space available. Their description suggests it's not an emulsion shock, which is good. It lacks compression adjustment, but that's not terrible. I spoke to the US distributor a minute ago, and while they gave me an impression of extreme cluelessnesss, they also gave me a current price: $571 for an XZE01, which is apparently the right thing.

So I've got a few choices. Right now, Hagon sounds like the best choice, although Bitubo is a close runner-up. I think the Hagon is likely to be a better deal, in part because the distributor sounds like he knows his business (which the Bitubo distro doesn't), and in part because the Hagon is cheaper and probably offers similar performance. "Probably" and "similar" are, of course, complete weasel-words. Unfortunately, finding reviews of shocks is very difficult, and very few people have actually tried multiple shocks in their bikes then written about it.

Posted at 10:31 permanent link category: /motorcycle

Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater