... and why the back suspension of the 800 Trail (at least) nearly knocks your fillings loose on the bumps.
And it's kind of insulting.
I wondered since my first examination of my new 800 Trail, why the SXS hammers you like an unloaded dump truck in the rear, and why the shock springs were so oddly disproportionate front and rear when compared with one another. The front springs occupy almost all of the length allowed for them, the front shock's adjustable collars being within a half inch of the top of the threaded section.
The rear shocks on the other hand have springs that occupy little more than half the length of the shock and the retainer collars are so far down the threads that over four inches of bare threaded shock body stick up exposed above the retainers.
Why I wondered would CF Moto select such widely disproportionate length springs? Had they just grabbed any old springs off the shelf?
No, it's a little more smarmy than that.
I was just looking at the service manual and lo, on page 51 there is a photograph that includes a rear shock and that rear shock in that photo has a two stage spring set! The lower spring, about 3/5th the length allotted is a slightly bigger wire size than the top 2/5th length spring and there's a spacer between these. The combined length of the two springs (or rather the one dual-stage spring system) installed is, like the front, nearly the whole length of the shock allotted for the spring. It looks right and proper in the picture. Obviously this is how the rear shock was designed to work.
But on my 800 trail and I suspect a lot of others, the top softer spring is missing and the collar is simply spun way further down, and the short harder and larger wire spring that probably might normally only come under compression when landing a jump, is doing the whole springing job all by itself!
No wonder the back suspension on the 800 makes you feel like Joe Pesci in Casino, getting beaten with baseball bats.
It would appear that somebody at CF Moto, for some reason decided to leave out the softer springs, the first compliant part of a progressive spring system, and leave us with just a short range hard as rocks big wire spring.
And why would they do that? Was it a problem with timely supply of the smaller springs and someone said, 'We have deadlines to meet, to hell with the customers, spin the collars on down to the bottom springs, there's enough thread and the bozo buyers will never know the difference.'?
But where are all these smaller springs? Can they be sourced? Who makes the shock/spring units on the CF Moto? (I've heard Elka but I have also heard not)
Is this a ploy by Elka to make their brand badged shocks so much better than the CF Moto's stock unbranded ones? No wonder Elka's or any other shocks are a great improvement!
Maybe I'm too paranoid but somewhere in this I seem to sense customers being treated without much respect.
ps. on page 227 the service manual addresses the rear suspension and shocks and in this case it's a single spring, though again it isn't a ridiculously short heavy one but rather it is the full length allowed for.
Why did they do that and where are our lighter springs?
pps. Watch for CF Moto to respond with "Um, ah, yeah ah, they're supposed to look like that, it's the new hot thing."
Don't even try.