Thanks for the info.

I am familiar with both YSS and the rebuild stock solutions.

What I'm looking for is opinions related to performance/durability of Wilburs shocks. Preferably from people that have used them on their bikes in RTW and other dirty/crappy conditions.

Cheers,

Pawlie

I had a Wilburs shock built for my R100GS a few years ago. I abused it, badly! It finally spewed its guts out after 40,000 miles of torture. It was an excellent shock, and the performance set the bar IMHO. It had the hydraulic pre-load, which was unnecesary, heavy and got in the way. I would buy it again, BUT, service is extremely lacking and for that reason i would choose another brand. After i blew it out in N.Saskatchewan, i sent it out to Ted Porters BMW, the current distributer in the USA, to get it rebuilt. It took them MONTHS before i received the shock I'm currently dealing with Cogent Dynamics, they rebuilt my shock on the DR650. So far, so good
You could try Elka in Quebec (I think??) a bit closer to home. Or maybe there is another distributer? After dealing with the last shop, i would send it directly to Germany if i had another problem.

I've just googled YSS shocks and I must say I'm amazed at the quantity of shocks they have for alot of bikes out there...

I even got interested in one of these as they are longer than my XT600E and are rebuildable...

YAMAHA TT 600 MZ506-400TRL-06 YAMAHA TT 600 R MZ506-400TRL-07
Just don't know anything out YSS prices but I must say they are spread all over Europe!

Y.S.S. :: World Class Suspension ::


Vando

Yes, they are also big in Australia - I put a set of their cartridge emulators in the front end of my Burgman around 6 months back.

__________________
Garry from Oz - powered by Burgman

Pawlie,
Not sure if you've noticed...but a few responders to your query(including myself) may have gone through the decision making process you're going through. There may be some reasons worth knowing why we opted not to go with Wilber's.
Incidentally, my YSS has RTW/dirty/crappy conditions experience...and performed exceptionally. Take a peek at my pics as to where and when.

__________________
edde
93 BMW K75s
www.motoedde.com

Interesting to see they now have a R&D centre in Holland.

After KTM moved WP to Austria, most of the Dutch WP designers and technicians stayed in Holland ... many ended up moving to Hyperpro. I guess their new R&D centre in Holland explains what happened to the rest.

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Eddie,

I actually had Klaus build up a YSS a year or two ago. The thing never made it out of the box. Packed it right up and sent it back. It might have been ok in an emergency to get home but the design/build was not right for the bike. His retun policy was good.



Pawlie

farqhuar and how are they holding up?

Pawlie... and how much did the rear shock cost? or should've cost lol...


If I need a rear shock for my XT600E in the future, considering the prices, I might consider on getting a YSS but the TT600 400mm long one as I need a little increase on my rear shock...

Vando

What exactly was the issue with the design and build that made you not willing to take it out of the box and try it?
This information would be helpful for those considering it.

__________________
edde
93 BMW K75s
www.motoedde.com

This is steering wildly of topic but I'll address the above issue as best I can then welcome more responses to the original question of How wilbers shocks are working out for owners under hard conditions.

It's funny how being unable to see or touch products by ordering online often ends up with a bad result. I think that's how it went sidways in this case. Let me explain:

When the shock showed up it looked like the provervbial hotdog thrown down a hallway! Great big spring with a lonley narrow little damping unit in the centre.

Bikes that get worked hard on trails flow a lot of oil back and forth thorugh the valves and chambers of shocks, this produces a lot of heat. Heat is the enemy! It ruins parts and performance of the shock suffers when too much heat is hanging around.

Modern long travel enduro/dirt shock designs encorporate lagre shock bodys. One of the functions of the large body is to increase oil capacity (often with remote chambers and their own cylinder fins) in an attempt to fight heat and the resultant negative effects on suspension.

The long travel design(lots of susp. movement) combined with low oil capacity, left me unconvinced the YSS was up to the difficult task of controlling heat produced by a hard working enduro bike. Short travel street bike, maybe.

There is not a single large capacity dirtbike produced in the last 30 years (stock or aftermarket)equipped with a tiny damper like this.

So it went back in the box.

This is speculation on my part but:

I think YSS stuffed one of their shocks intended for a dual shock rear end on a monoshock style assembly and called it good. Bit like trying to sell a knife to a guy heading to a gun fight. No thanks.

The product looked like a quality constructed item just not remotely correct for its intended use. Again, no modern enduro bikes are equipped with tiny dampers. If it looks like a pig, smells like a pig and acts like a pig...It's a pig.

Klaus was helpful and professional throughout this difficult process.

Just don't know why he tried to sell me a product that was wrong for the job.


Now:
I would still like to hear from owners of Wilbers shocks as to how they are working out. Specifically interested if some one has fitted a resivoir type shock to a the good old 43F! Thank you for your time and comments.

Cheers,

Pawlie

My Wilburs had a remote resivoir with high/low speed dampening. Honestly, i feel that this option is what seperates an average to good ride with lots of on/off road transition, to a phenomenal ride! I wish my Cogent shock had this level of tuneability. As i said, i rate the Wilburs at the top of the list, and the Cogent a close second. Still, the service problem left a bad taste in my mouth. You see, the parts are, like most German products, very specific, high quality and therefor expensive. This is not the shock you want to blow it's seals in Bolivia, but then again, which one is?
BTW, i recoment fitting a sock to the shock to protect the seals from dirt. As long as the piston is kept clean, there is no reason a high quality shock should blow its seals. The culprit with my shock was without a doubt dirt and sand, the rebound dampening adjuster was full of junk!

I take issue with accusing Klaus of selling you something that's not up to the job. I don't think Klaus would put a customer in a sticky situation to sell product. To claim that is poor taste.

And what makes you think a shock sleeve won't create heat issues that you claim to be a susceptibility of shocks with small reservoirs like YSS??

Isn't the seal on the shaft there to mitigate the dirt/grit issues while providing air cooling to the shock's oil to help avoid distorting/warping the seal that contacts within the chamber? Which then creates damping issues when the oil leaks out?

__________________
edde
93 BMW K75s
www.motoedde.com

Our blown up Wilbers shomewhere in Argentinian Patagonia, even made my wife mad

Anyways, I put Wilbers on our R1100GS for RTW journey based on good stories around and recommendations on the internet about how good they are with excellent warranty and stuff. I had it set up for my requirements with harder spring directly from Wilbers Germany. ...and, ours blew up after just 9000 km in South-America.

After that it started to blew up after every 500-1000 km or so. I repaired it some 5 times, spent silly amounts of money and I was stuck for a MONTH in Buenos Aires because of Wilbers "excellent" warranty is useless in S-America, I kept returning to BA because it kept breaking down every time I left. Got tired of repairing and spending crazy amounts of money on it (count only hotel prices in BA for a month!), basically I was dying of frustruation with Wilbers. I did a lot of homework and bought Öhlins, that also has had a fair share of its problems on the rest of our journey.

Öhlins design is vastly better than that of Wilbers, with better main seal material (it took some over 10 years for Öhlins to figure the ideal rubber mixture out - most of others still haven't got it right) and it has a decent main seal cooling with a cap that has large holes placed at 120 degrees. Main causing problem with Wilber's blowing was not enough cooling - cap was fully closed on our Wilbers body (bad idea by Wilbers engineers!). Rod coating was one of the worst I've ever seen - polished spots appeared on the rod already after some 5000-10000 km of riding. Put those factors into equations with overheated shock riding on hard terrain - mix it with low quality main seal rubber mixture that gets soft = blown leaking shock.

Wilbers' R&D department have a lot of work in their hands IMHO to build a true-offroad-influenced-RTW capable shock. They're far from achieving the goal now IMHO. The only good point I see on Wilbers is the reasonably affordable price that I stupidly took as the bait and in the end paid the money worth of 4-5 brand new Wilbers shocks for my mistake!

Öhlins: no polished spots on the rod's coating after some over 70 000 km of riding now on our RTW journey. Valving (dampening/rebound characteristics) is noticeably better than Wilbers' - although I got our Öhlins re-valved by Stig Pettersen on our US leg, who's known to make magic out of Öhlins shocks.

Problems: through my practice with shocks in fact I find it's very hard to kill Öhlins shock to make it leak, even when the shock smokes (yes, I've made the shock so hot that it smokes! riding in South-Bolivian technical trails 2up), but it's fairly easy to bend the main body with bottom-outs, since Öhlins switched their shocks to aluminium body lately, that through hard bottom outs riding offroad starts to bend from the bottom part of the shock's main body. It usually means nothing, since the piston works much higher than the bottom bending part, but I reckon in time it can bend enough to start affecting the seal's properties. To put things into perspective Wilbers' design is actually even worse, since Wilbers' main body consists of two parts - a tube and a cap that's glued on - with bottom outs you can crack the glue and it can leak from the main body's upper part instead, and some people have reported it. Öhlins' hydraulic preloader just suck big time! I don't know what the Swedish designer had smoked when designing this fancy looking bit, but it's not even close to deserving that world-famous "Ö" logo on it. It cannot take any beating at all when you've added some preload with stronger spring. It uses regular stupid o-ring seal and it just leaks empty the first time you hit the hard offroad. Even Stig said it's useless under harder-springed shocks.

If ONLY Öhlins could make stainless steel body shock (like they did in the old times) with redesigned hydraulic preloader, it'd make a bomb proof reliable (and actually, from valving perspective - working!) shock for serious RTW traveller who likes to do a lot of offroad with fully loaded bike.

Anyways, sorry for the longish rant guys, but I've had silly bad experiences with aftermarket shocks, especially with Wilbers. Hopefully it'll give you a lesson. You can partly blame me, since I do take my overloaded GS offroad, 2-up, to places where probably most of 2-up travellers wouldn't go, but the hype the aftermarket shocks get about their customizing for hard conditions etc just doesn't hold up. Well OK, Öhlins now finally works for me, but as I said, it has its own problems and with its design flaws like the hydraulic preloader part it's certainly not worth the money you pay for them - like on most aftermarket shocks that are made in western world (including Japanese shocks). Maybe, just maybe, the new YSS will be the answer. Even if they blow up, they don't cost you a fortune to buy them.

If anyone's wondering, I did some research on WP's, Technoflex (looks too similar to Wilbers?), Hyperpro, Elka and some others that could be made to fit my bike. Some were quite promising, but excluding the WP, the apparent R&D time they've had isn't much so I didn't risk with them. I'd really like to try WP in the future, since they seem to have a lot of experience on offroad part (whereas Öhlins seems to be focusing more on-road bikes, ditto Wilbers).

That said I think you'll do fine with ANY kind of shock if you mostly stick to smooth roads and very carefully-slowly ride offroad. But if you really enjoy riding hard offroad with a fully loaded bike, then you must really do your homework.

Hope this helps, Margus