How many lbs is your rear spring...?

[caferacer51]

Hi guys, please forgive me if these are some basic questions, I promise you I have been doing some extensive googling myself to find the answers but not really finding much.

Quite a few of the later model bikes come with coil springs for the rear suspension unit.

Q.1 Are all of the coil springs fitted over oil dampened units (ODS?)

Q.2 What would happen if you fitted a coil spring over an old elastomer unit?

Q.3 What lb weight/force do these springs need to be?

[w2zero]

Hi guys, please forgive me if these are some basic questions, I promise you I have been doing some extensive googling myself to find the answers but not really finding much.

Quite a few of the later model bikes come with coil springs for the rear suspension unit.

Q.1 Are all of the coil springs fitted over oil dampened units (ODS?)
A.   No, the early ODS shocks were fitted in the yellow elastomers.  Soon after, they were fitted with coil springs over the ODS shocks.

Q.2 What would happen if you fitted a coil spring over an old elastomer unit?
A.    While you can do it, the spring damping action of the elastomer "shock" won't approximate what an oil damped shock does.  It will work      but equates to "better than nothing".

Q.3 What lb weight/force do these springs need to be?
A.    Look in the Menu up top left of the page and check out the "How To's" then scroll down to the spring rate charts for various models and years. 
I put a small digital shipping scale on my drill press table and then set springs on it and measured the pounds of pressure at one inch on some of my unmarked springs.  Interesting to note that some of the labelled spring rates were only close.

[fyrstormer]

I weigh 170lbs and my rear spring is a 350lb/in titanium spring. It works pretty well -- it works a lot better now that I have that spring combined with a Noleen NR-4 damper, so I can control both compression and rebound damping.