The bladder/oil reservoir is also there to compensate for the piston rod. When the oil is pressed from one side of the piston to the other, there is less volume where the piston rod is in the cylinder. Hope that make sense!
most of the damping is controlled by the shim stack on the piston not the oil flow into the reservoir which you have totally ignored, adjusters on the flow to the reservoir are for fine adjustment only.
The way I see it that this is a version of an old type shock with valves in the piston and the external appendage is to separate the oil from the air (in old shocks the oil fill is to about 90% or less so the oil can expand with temperature differences) so that in rapid movements the oil has no chance to foam up.
Great to see the insides of this awful shocks. Greatly explained and never afraid to admit when you are wrong. This is for all the ones saying "he never does anything"
On dirtbikes you need to service shocks quite regularly. Manuals usually require pump gas reservoir to 100KPa(140-150psi) pressure. Usually they ask to use nitrogen but I think most of people ok with air. Piston type gas reservoir are more advanced and supposed to be better, but somehow people now convert them back to bladder on KTMs. Maybe it is bad design, but they speculate about high static friction of piston and as result harsh behavior on small bumps.
I worked in a damper test facility and did competitive comparisons on outside aftermarket products occasionally. That reservoir is just meant to allow a smaller tube for the piston so it fits inside a spring. the gas pressure in the bladder just keeps the fluid From all migrating to the chamber. It won't help cavitating except at parking lot speeds and If you put any amount of real gas pressure it it, something will fail. Fun fact:. If you cavitation test (or any high velocity test) one for any length of time, that rubber will tear. I'd bet money that there is a (shitty) valve stack in that piston.
So Matt, better than you thought and bearing in mind they are a tenth of the price of Ohlins good value for a basic upgrade on a budget. I had a early version of these years ago and they worked fine for the 20K miles I used them for. They were about £ 80 a pair! and performed far better than the OEM ones . I didn't expect them to be made or perform like a top quality product. TEC are a great company to deal with , very honest and straightforward and give the ordinary guy a chance to customise their bike at reasonable cost with decent quality components ( not all of which are made in China)
"So Matt, better than you thought and bearing in mind they are a tenth of the price of Ohlins good value for a basic upgrade on a budget." - I didn't say that. I said you might as well put jelly babies in it. These are WORSE than any OEM version, apart from maybe RE, where they're the same. "I had a early version of these years ago and they worked fine for the 20K miles I used them for." - what does work fine mean? And are you saying they were better than the OEMs and how do you know?
I had a set of these shocks on a year old Triumph Speed Twin that someone thought they had improved! Absolutely horrible and unsafe! I ripped that crap off and went Nitron all round! Sorted!
Nah, they just found a way to make air suspension cheaper and more adjustable. It's not as good as active suspension systems, but a lot simpler at the same time.
Most mountain bike forks and shocks use air springs, I think for simplicity and to loose the weight of the spring. They seem to work pretty well . Great to see inside, top job
Some even have duel air Chambers. Others use coil and air (mostly dirt jump forks and some downhill forks like the Manitou Dorado fork) . Downhill forks will use coil still as they are more supple than air .
I remember those pure gas shocks you mentioned - Fournales I think they were called. On the subject of recharging the nitrogen on sealed shocks, Öhlins use a needle tool which actually pierces a rubber membrane within the reservoir and the gas is introduced through that. When the needle is removed, the rubber membrane instantly "self-heals" and seals the gas inside. Interestingly, the actual gas pressure is not that critical, (within limits). This is an extract from the TTX service manual, which has a recommended gas pressure of 75 bar. "In the TTX, different gas pressures have no influence on the damper characteristics. For instance a range of 2 to 10 bar can be used with no influence on the characteristics. Even going higher than10 bar will not effect the damping characteristics but it will exert unnecessary forces on the damper parts. Be aware that at 0 bar, there will be cavitation."
Fournales uses a gas spring with an oil damper. There was a series of mountain bike shocks and fork cartridges that used air as the damping fluid in addition to acting as the spring. That was ~20 years ago so suspension travel was commonly much less on mountain bikes which might have covered up a lot of flaws. IIRC they were straight orifice dampers but they probably behaved differently from hydraulic orifice dampers as the air was compressible. I've never been able to find a force-velocity diagram of one of them though. Air-spung oil-damped suspension is common on mountain bikes and used in some Motocross forks and snowmobile suspension. Airplanes frequently use air springs in their landing gear as well.
@@Surestick88 There's an interesting load/displacement graph for a Fournales shock in Tony Foale's book "Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design" p. 6-6 if you have access to a copy.
I have a fucked vfr800 vtec shock, it was leaking so I got a replacement. I did cut the rubber remote preload pipe to make it easier to remove though. it's just been sitting in my shed cause I'm lazy and haven't taken it to the tip. If you want it you can have it.
It's a shame that nut doesn't want to come off as it would be very interesting to see the quality (or lack of) of the piston and the shim stacks they use.
Been looking forward to seeing this for some time. Cracking job explaining damping and spring function. I'm surprised to see the cross drilling as I've seen other shocks of this type chopped up and they were solid in that area. Perhaps the Chinese are learning?
Ha ha ha when I was a kid I used to make air suspensions for my RC cars with small syringes. Different size bottles as remotes, different size and material hoses to attach the bottles to see how it affected the suspension. They were really shitty suspensions but they taught me a lot about how to change the characteristics of it just by the routing of the air.
Miss a couple of important points. The damping action converts oil flow into heat. Heat is dissipated through the shock body. If the heat builds up from excessive action the oil will start to vapourise and the shock fades. The gas pressure is there to reduce cavitation as u say and also raises the oil vapour pressure to stop the oil from boiling and causing fade. That Gas canister is totally wrong, the oil shouldn't be able to push down the gallery to the gas bladder. Needs valves to prevent this. Oil flow should only be through the piston valves so as the piston moves up oil is displaced to the bottom of the piston in a controlled manner. Can't comment on the floating piston type, would be interesting to see one sectioned.
When force is applied to the oil there's a transfer of energy, kinetic to the oil, and this compresses it. The pressure of the oil is a energy reservoir so has potential energy. The system isn't sealed, so the pressure is due to the flow rate through the drilled feed to the piggyback cylinder. The flow is resisted by the cross-sectional area. Due to compression heat is a waste product, i.e waste heat. This is a by product and not the function of the system. What I mean in basic chat is a brake system is a heat conversion system, suspension isn't. In fact this is something of an issue that needs to be handled, which is based on what you've said. I'm trying to get the mechanical point across. In future videos we'll talk about the limiting factors like the materials used (limits of using oil) also more about viscocity, heat dissipation, harmonics etc.
No, oil crush gas bladder. Shock shaft dispalce additional volume when it's moving in. The volume of whole system is smaller in compressed state. About heat you partly right, but it is important if you race on professional level. Otherwise most of heat comes from exhaust pipe nearby.
@@dirtygarageguy I agree compression produces heat but the inverse must also be true. So on the down stroke as the fluid expands the oil would cool. I'm old enough to remember the days before Gas pressurised shocks where a thing on dirt bikes. The old bed springs (as we called um) would turn to pogo sticks pretty quickly with some harsh treatment. Looking forward to seeing a propper damper sectioned.
BTW Fournales make spring less bike shocks, they use air only, though at high pressure, something like 900 psi, had them on one of my bikes for many years, they still work fine.
Mountain bike suspension pumps which are for high pressure, low volume air springs usually have a two stage/zero loss connector to stop the pressure escaping from the schrader valve when unscrewing the connector from the valve. First you unscrew the part of the connector that presses on the valve core, closing the valve, then unscrew the rest of the connector meaning no air should be lost from the air spring of the fork/shock. My old Topeak pocket dxg shock pump has a two stage, zero loss connectors. I still have them from when I used to ride mountain bikes with air sprung forks and rear shocks. My forks just had an air spring, the damping oil wasn't pressurised (apart from one model of fork I have with switchable travel, which had a common fault where the air chamber seal would pass air into the oil filled chamber that adjusted the travel of the fork, blowing the oil out of the fork. I had a set rebuilt with new parts by the distributer that when I opened the box the seals had already leaked in transit . They eventually built me a brand new fork as they had none left, but I hardly used it, I was thinking of stripping it to see if I could find a better sealing solution than the stock orings, possibly a quad ring seal or something that might handle the pressure better) One of my air shocks does have a air spring and a pressurised piggy back oil reservoir with an IFP, Fox DHX 5.0 Air.
I'm not going to buy a set to verify this but I found a statement on another site - chrislivengood - "11 psi according to the instructions" which makes me think the settings are included with the shocks. It's likely to vary depending on model. However I also found another statement claiming that he had to increase the pressure to 45 psi (80 psi in another statement) to return the shock to fully extended. That's the function of the spring, not the gas, so he clearly doesn't understand what he's got. Another Del perhaps?
LOL he did what? to returm to full extension? As for the instructions, someone sent a message saying he has instructions and there's no mention of a pressure. I'll chase him up and try to get a picture
When the weight on the spring is high enough to make the closer coils (at the top) go coil bound, the spring becomes effectively stiffer, yes? At first I thought you were saying the higher angle/greater spacing of the (bottom) of each coil means they are stiffer (whereas each coil is longer, so will deflect more) but you are really saying that the higher angle means less coils per unit length, hence the reltive increase in stiffness - correct?
Hi Matt, hope your well. I've watched you for year and this is first time for me contributing to your channel. I've got a set of these on my missus bike, only because it lowered her bike cos she's got little legs, she doesn't do many miles a year, is she ok to run them, she does less miles than del's lass.
Hi I have Zx9r front springs and what ever maxton didn’t need after getting my bike set up by them and rear shock sealed unit heading derby nots way in morning you can have them I’ll go in shed and drop off if you want
Question - the OEM rear on my old zx9r (at 98k miles I'm on my third) has a nitrogen gas reservoir - how much of the suspension does this contribute to at the rear? I'm almost certain that at this point, 20 years down the line, there won't be any gas left in the shock. But it got me wondering what I'm missing. Several people tell me not very much at all, for normal road riding.
Hi Matt, pre covid (2018) myself and a friend were at Stonley trade show looking for some new suppliers. If I am not mistaken we viewed and handled Mr Sato’s products and they were categorically Chinese products at that time.
@@dirtygarageguy And he doesn't lie? We all know that he's better at one type of fabrication than the other 😏 It was quite a while back. Even before you and him became besties. Yes I used to watch his channel regularly. It was when the matt black Bandit gained plastic chains that I started having doubts 😬
This is really interesting, and I learned a lot. Thanks Matt. If you're interested, I replaced the OEM shocks on my Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 with some Hagon shocks. I know how you feel about Enfields, but it may be a good comparison against these TEC ones, as A LOT of people replace their RE ones for these TEC ones. Would be interesting (for me) to see if there's any difference, or if people are just burning money. Like these, the stock RE ones have the piggy-back chamber. If you're interested, let me know. Unfortunately, I don't have Facebook.
Um bom dia meu amigo , está difícil aqui no Brasil encontrar peças para Kawasaki ER-5 a minha está toda desmontada.Sou casado a más de 17 anos eu que tenho que chegar na minha esposa, más era pra ele também fazer a parte dela 🤓👍 eu adoro sé tocado
Nice one Matt. I hope this question doesn’t make me sound like a total Bellend. I’ve always had it in my mind that: The springs absorb the the energy / shock from the road, so I’ve always thought they were the Shock Absorber’s. The Hydraulic/Gas struts Dampen the spring bounce and are called dampers not shock absorbers (I know they shock absorb as well). Yes I know it’s a really complex system. If I’m being a total knob please let me know. Take Care. I’m walking backwards for Christmas this year, just in case. 🤙.
It like trying to seperate what front forks do with front brakes. The forks are there for suspension, and the brakes to stop you, but when you pull the brakes the suspension works, even on a perfectly flat smooth road... It's actually a big problem for suspension and brakes, and why they made the anti-dive systems and why hub centre steering exists at all.
What about the rate of compression due to the angle of the shocker mountings as in not straight up and down against an angled mounted, different rates i would imagine?
So, what your saying in the end Matt, once you distill down all the info on how shock absorbers work is that these Tec ones are basic in their design and pretty crappily made. Yep thought so too.
Im going to have to disagree with you about the setup being useless. Badly designed, maybe. Untested, without a doubt. but useless? no. Standard shocks are usually emulsion shocks, where the air lives in the same cavity as the oil. as the shock is in operation said oil is blended together with the air making an emulsion its why on some bikes you will find the suspension feels floaty and gross after 15/20/45 mins of riding. By having using a bladder (not a balloon) it allows you to keep at least some sort of consistent feel over the duration of a ride, as the oil is separated from the gas. you could go as far as to change the oil weight with this to change the damping characteristics (you wouldn't but I hope you can see my point) Also, it would have been good it you got the seal head out so we can look at the shimming and valve! crap, yes, useless not quite, better than oem.......uhhhhh......maybe a Harley :D
"you will find the suspension feels floaty and gross after 15/20/45 mins of riding." 1 - I know what emulsion shocks are but thanks for the lesson. I even did a video about it, long ago in a shed far far away. 2 - I would love to know how you know a rear shock is performing badly on britsh roads and it isn't anything other than the shocks and due to it being an emulsion shock. I'm being serious. Do you have any examples? 3 - bladder or baloon LOL 4 - Keeping the oil seperate from the gas does what? I know what it is said to do, but I wanna hear your explanation why. 5 - I do get your point about oil. 6 - I'll mill the end of the shaft off and get the rod out. Are they better than any OEM? Probably the same as RE, because I've seen those and I'm sure theyre from the same factory in Shenzhen
I'm curious what information by looking at shim stack you can deduce(because some people in comments want to see it)? In my understanding without knowing dimensions of piston orifices, all shims and do shim calculator you can't understand anything.
A good demonstration of refurbishing a decent shock is found at - ua-cam.com/video/69si7ycPe6Q/v-deo.html it expands on information given here and shows that TEC shocks are only good for dissection?
Watching and learning all the time♥️👀👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
TEC are budget shocks, it is never going to be the quality of an expensive shock, pointless comparing to a shock would two or 3 times more, you gat it’s budget quality and it’s a budget shock. They are built in a factory, a Chinese factory.
I don't think the obvious (poor) quality is the issue - it's simply interesting to show people what is really inside these things and explaining how they work, because people like Del are touting them as quality items that you can use to supersede OEM shocks, which from seeing this is clearly not true.
@@noggintube people use them as a replacement for Royal Enfield shocks and say it’s an improvement, so the starting point is lower, it would have been good to see a HD shock cut in half to compare, one would hope the HD was better, but let’s be honest, HD is not cutting edge with most of their products.
Looks to me like some Chinese ‘engineers’ got hold of a decent shock, stripped it and copied it….poorly! They worked out what the design does but Not fully understanding what the components need to do and why. Classic example is on ‘Forgotten Weapons’ (I know you watch it!) Chinese warlord pistols… bonkers counterfeit guns copied from real ones and ‘decorative’ safety catches added😆
If the HD rear brake master cylinder, swingarm, engine cases, fittings and other stuff are anything to go by, this chinese cheap shocks are an improvement over the OEM shocks.
@@dirtygarageguy Just joking Matt. I was taking a stab at the shit stuff HD made. I wouldn't buy anything made by TEC or HD. The sad part is that while TEC are cheap shit, people pay good money for HD products.
What a load of crap . That took you half an hour to explain completely wrong the point of the reservoir. It's to pressurize the oil and allow for the oil displaced by the volume chrome shaft to have somewhere to go. Damping is mainly done by valving on the main piston .
Lol let's go through what you just said. It's to apply pressure to the oil. Yep said that. It's for the displaced to have somewhere to go. Yep said that Damping is mainly done by the valves on the main piston. Damping is done by the oil. I couldn't or hadn't got to the piston because of the reasons I showed. I explained that by restricting the oil flow that's how dampening is metered. I also said we're going to go through the entire shock design in the near future with an entire series of videos... If that's too much for you to understand I wouldn't sub to this channel. We seem to have reached the limit of your intelligence.
The bladder/oil reservoir is also there to compensate for the piston rod. When the oil is pressed from one side of the piston to the other, there is less volume where the piston rod is in the cylinder. Hope that make sense!
most of the damping is controlled by the shim stack on the piston not the oil flow into the reservoir which you have totally ignored, adjusters on the flow to the reservoir are for fine adjustment only.
The way I see it that this is a version of an old type shock with valves in the piston and the external appendage is to separate the oil from the air (in old shocks the oil fill is to about 90% or less so the oil can expand with temperature differences) so that in rapid movements the oil has no chance to foam up.
Great to see the insides of this awful shocks. Greatly explained and never afraid to admit when you are wrong.
This is for all the ones saying "he never does anything"
On dirtbikes you need to service shocks quite regularly. Manuals usually require pump gas reservoir to 100KPa(140-150psi) pressure. Usually they ask to use nitrogen but I think most of people ok with air.
Piston type gas reservoir are more advanced and supposed to be better, but somehow people now convert them back to bladder on KTMs. Maybe it is bad design, but they speculate about high static friction of piston and as result harsh behavior on small bumps.
I worked in a damper test facility and did competitive comparisons on outside aftermarket products occasionally. That reservoir is just meant to allow a smaller tube for the piston so it fits inside a spring. the gas pressure in the bladder just keeps the fluid From all migrating to the chamber. It won't help cavitating except at parking lot speeds and If you put any amount of real gas pressure it it, something will fail. Fun fact:. If you cavitation test (or any high velocity test) one for any length of time, that rubber will tear. I'd bet money that there is a (shitty) valve stack in that piston.
So Matt, better than you thought and bearing in mind they are a tenth of the price of Ohlins good value for a basic upgrade
on a budget. I had a early version of these years ago and they worked fine for the 20K miles I used them for.
They were about £ 80 a pair! and performed far better than the OEM ones . I didn't expect them to be made or perform like
a top quality product.
TEC are a great company to deal with , very honest and straightforward and give the ordinary guy a chance to customise
their bike at reasonable cost with decent quality components ( not all of which are made in China)
"So Matt, better than you thought and bearing in mind they are a tenth of the price of Ohlins good value for a basic upgrade
on a budget."
- I didn't say that. I said you might as well put jelly babies in it.
These are WORSE than any OEM version, apart from maybe RE, where they're the same.
"I had a early version of these years ago and they worked fine for the 20K miles I used them for."
- what does work fine mean? And are you saying they were better than the OEMs and how do you know?
I had a set of these shocks on a year old Triumph Speed Twin that someone thought they had improved! Absolutely horrible and unsafe! I ripped that crap off and went Nitron all round! Sorted!
Excellent primer on suspension-lucid, concise, informative.
Citroen perfected suspension
Nah, they just found a way to make air suspension cheaper and more adjustable. It's not as good as active suspension systems, but a lot simpler at the same time.
Id say williams did that in the early 90s
@@stanmil5495 I’d say Citroen were pretty close 20 years earlier. Not perfect maybe but a beautiful mechanical/hydraulic/oleomatic solution.
Most mountain bike forks and shocks use air springs, I think for simplicity and to loose the weight of the spring. They seem to work pretty well .
Great to see inside, top job
Some even have duel air Chambers. Others use coil and air (mostly dirt jump forks and some downhill forks like the Manitou Dorado fork) . Downhill forks will use coil still as they are more supple than air .
I remember those pure gas shocks you mentioned - Fournales I think they were called. On the subject of recharging the nitrogen on sealed shocks, Öhlins use a needle tool which actually pierces a rubber membrane within the reservoir and the gas is introduced through that. When the needle is removed, the rubber membrane instantly "self-heals" and seals the gas inside. Interestingly, the actual gas pressure is not that critical, (within limits). This is an extract from the TTX service manual, which has a recommended gas pressure of 75 bar. "In the TTX, different gas pressures have no influence on the damper characteristics. For instance a range of 2 to 10 bar can be used with no influence on the characteristics. Even going higher than10 bar will not effect the damping characteristics but it will exert unnecessary forces on the damper parts. Be aware that at 0 bar, there will be cavitation."
Fournales uses a gas spring with an oil damper. There was a series of mountain bike shocks and fork cartridges that used air as the damping fluid in addition to acting as the spring. That was ~20 years ago so suspension travel was commonly much less on mountain bikes which might have covered up a lot of flaws. IIRC they were straight orifice dampers but they probably behaved differently from hydraulic orifice dampers as the air was compressible. I've never been able to find a force-velocity diagram of one of them though.
Air-spung oil-damped suspension is common on mountain bikes and used in some Motocross forks and snowmobile suspension. Airplanes frequently use air springs in their landing gear as well.
@@Surestick88 There's an interesting load/displacement graph for a Fournales shock in Tony Foale's book "Motorcycle Handling and Chassis Design" p. 6-6 if you have access to a copy.
60 % of thetime you get excited over the spring and oil the lens fogs up everytime. 😂
Now you just need to cut a Öhlins TTX GP shock in half to compare.
I have a fucked vfr800 vtec shock, it was leaking so I got a replacement. I did cut the rubber remote preload pipe to make it easier to remove though. it's just been sitting in my shed cause I'm lazy and haven't taken it to the tip.
If you want it you can have it.
Excellent explanation and improved my understanding of suspension.
It's a shame that nut doesn't want to come off as it would be very interesting to see the quality (or lack of) of the piston and the shim stacks they use.
I'm gonna mill the end off and drag it all out
@@dirtygarageguy please do
No doubt Craig will be replacing the shock on his GS build........
Been looking forward to seeing this for some time.
Cracking job explaining damping and spring function. I'm surprised to see the cross drilling as I've seen other shocks of this type chopped up and they were solid in that area.
Perhaps the Chinese are learning?
I’ll see if I have a worn out expensive shock laying around the shop somewhere. Be great to see cut in half
"Good night out" bloody spat my tea out 🤣🤣
I now need to see inside a £1000 shock absorber
I finally learned how progressive springs work. Thank you for the great lesson through the fog.
Ha ha ha when I was a kid I used to make air suspensions for my RC cars with small syringes. Different size bottles as remotes, different size and material hoses to attach the bottles to see how it affected the suspension. They were really shitty suspensions but they taught me a lot about how to change the characteristics of it just by the routing of the air.
I think I've still got the old shock for my ZX9R in the garage. It's a bit rusty and ratty, but if you want it (and I can find it), it's yours.
Yes PM me
@TheWorkshop2021 done. Left you a FB message with a picture. 👍
Miss a couple of important points. The damping action converts oil flow into heat. Heat is dissipated through the shock body. If the heat builds up from excessive action the oil will start to vapourise and the shock fades.
The gas pressure is there to reduce cavitation as u say and also raises the oil vapour pressure to stop the oil from boiling and causing fade.
That Gas canister is totally wrong, the oil shouldn't be able to push down the gallery to the gas bladder. Needs valves to prevent this.
Oil flow should only be through the piston valves so as the piston moves up oil is displaced to the bottom of the piston in a controlled manner.
Can't comment on the floating piston type, would be interesting to see one sectioned.
When force is applied to the oil there's a transfer of energy, kinetic to the oil, and this compresses it. The pressure of the oil is a energy reservoir so has potential energy. The system isn't sealed, so the pressure is due to the flow rate through the drilled feed to the piggyback cylinder. The flow is resisted by the cross-sectional area. Due to compression heat is a waste product, i.e waste heat. This is a by product and not the function of the system.
What I mean in basic chat is a brake system is a heat conversion system, suspension isn't. In fact this is something of an issue that needs to be handled, which is based on what you've said.
I'm trying to get the mechanical point across. In future videos we'll talk about the limiting factors like the materials used (limits of using oil) also more about viscocity, heat dissipation, harmonics etc.
No, oil crush gas bladder. Shock shaft dispalce additional volume when it's moving in. The volume of whole system is smaller in compressed state.
About heat you partly right, but it is important if you race on professional level. Otherwise most of heat comes from exhaust pipe nearby.
@@dirtygarageguy I agree compression produces heat but the inverse must also be true. So on the down stroke as the fluid expands the oil would cool. I'm old enough to remember the days before Gas pressurised shocks where a thing on dirt bikes. The old bed springs (as we called um) would turn to pogo sticks pretty quickly with some harsh treatment.
Looking forward to seeing a propper damper sectioned.
BTW Fournales make spring less bike shocks, they use air only, though at high pressure, something like 900 psi, had them on one of my bikes for many years, they still work fine.
Mountain bike suspension pumps which are for high pressure, low volume air springs usually have a two stage/zero loss connector to stop the pressure escaping from the schrader valve when unscrewing the connector from the valve.
First you unscrew the part of the connector that presses on the valve core, closing the valve, then unscrew the rest of the connector meaning no air should be lost from the air spring of the fork/shock.
My old Topeak pocket dxg shock pump has a two stage, zero loss connectors. I still have them from when I used to ride mountain bikes with air sprung forks and rear shocks. My forks just had an air spring, the damping oil wasn't pressurised
(apart from one model of fork I have with switchable travel, which had a common fault where the air chamber seal would pass air into the oil filled chamber that adjusted the travel of the fork, blowing the oil out of the fork. I had a set rebuilt with new parts by the distributer that when I opened the box the seals had already leaked in transit . They eventually built me a brand new fork as they had none left, but I hardly used it, I was thinking of stripping it to see if I could find a better sealing solution than the stock orings, possibly a quad ring seal or something that might handle the pressure better)
One of my air shocks does have a air spring and a pressurised piggy back oil reservoir with an IFP, Fox DHX 5.0 Air.
I'm not going to buy a set to verify this but I found a statement on another site - chrislivengood - "11 psi according to the instructions" which makes me think the settings are included with the shocks. It's likely to vary depending on model.
However I also found another statement claiming that he had to increase the pressure to 45 psi (80 psi in another statement) to return the shock to fully extended. That's the function of the spring, not the gas, so he clearly doesn't understand what he's got. Another Del perhaps?
LOL he did what? to returm to full extension?
As for the instructions, someone sent a message saying he has instructions and there's no mention of a pressure. I'll chase him up and try to get a picture
Looks like you were the one who was Delsplaining all along. Gotem.
A guess is delplaining?
When the weight on the spring is high enough to make the closer coils (at the top) go coil bound, the spring becomes effectively stiffer, yes?
At first I thought you were saying the higher angle/greater spacing of the (bottom) of each coil means they are stiffer (whereas each coil is longer, so will deflect more) but you are really saying that the higher angle means less coils per unit length, hence the reltive increase in stiffness - correct?
Hi Matt, hope your well.
I've watched you for year and this is first time for me contributing to your channel.
I've got a set of these on my missus bike, only because it lowered her bike cos she's got little legs, she doesn't do many miles a year, is she ok to run them, she does less miles than del's lass.
Should be OK. The design and build is crap but for a light rider not doing wheelies the springs are fine and the strut is OK.
I inherited a kit car from my dad and it didn't have hub centre stearing but it made the steering pretty light
Great work Matt, always wondered how these function.
At 27:20 you can add rod volume compensation to the list
Very interesting and informative. Yet another good spin off from the Del vids! Just saying. Cheers again, Andy.
You can buy mtb fork pump they go up 300 psi,what rebound,low speed damping,high speed damping sag
I was looking at these, which is probably why I rediscovered your channel. Will look elsewhere, Nice video.
Very well explained Matt.
Hi I have Zx9r front springs and what ever maxton didn’t need after getting my bike set up by them and rear shock sealed unit heading derby nots way in morning you can have them I’ll go in shed and drop off if you want
Email me matthew-hudson@outlook.com
@@dirtygarageguy done
I was thinking about getting a set of these for my Street Cup, glad I saw this first. Maybe some Hagons or Ohlins are a better bet
Question - the OEM rear on my old zx9r (at 98k miles I'm on my third) has a nitrogen gas reservoir - how much of the suspension does this contribute to at the rear? I'm almost certain that at this point, 20 years down the line, there won't be any gas left in the shock. But it got me wondering what I'm missing. Several people tell me not very much at all, for normal road riding.
Interesting topic, you didn’t mention if there are any valves in the piston & or if oil is on the rod side of the piston, is complicated I know.
Hi Matt, pre covid (2018) myself and a friend were at Stonley trade show looking for some new suppliers. If I am not mistaken we viewed and handled Mr Sato’s products and they were categorically Chinese products at that time.
I'm sure at one point Del said that Tec design their parts and get them made in China. Which seems to be the way these days
Did he? I've played the video were he said there machined here
@@dirtygarageguy And he doesn't lie? We all know that he's better at one type of fabrication than the other 😏
It was quite a while back. Even before you and him became besties. Yes I used to watch his channel regularly. It was when the matt black Bandit gained plastic chains that I started having doubts 😬
This is really interesting, and I learned a lot. Thanks Matt.
If you're interested, I replaced the OEM shocks on my Royal Enfield Interceptor 650 with some Hagon shocks. I know how you feel about Enfields, but it may be a good comparison against these TEC ones, as A LOT of people replace their RE ones for these TEC ones. Would be interesting (for me) to see if there's any difference, or if people are just burning money. Like these, the stock RE ones have the piggy-back chamber.
If you're interested, let me know. Unfortunately, I don't have Facebook.
here's my email matthew-hudson@outlook.com
I couldn't imagine that any OEM shocks are worse than that. I wonder how long these last before they fail.
Well explained.
what I'm anything do you intend to do with the parts after this?
I have a couple of uses for some of he parts is all. (nons bike related.)
I need them for future comparison
@@dirtygarageguy dam, I really need to find a supplier of buggered parts .
A lot of the colour is washed out. Unusual for your videos.
good informative video, thanks
Excellent video but will Del understand?
LMAO
K1 GSXR 600 rear shock available if you want it.
PM me on FB
yess!! more of this tipe of vids please and thx.
Have 1 of a derbi senda drd 125
Um bom dia meu amigo , está difícil aqui no Brasil encontrar peças para Kawasaki ER-5 a minha está toda desmontada.Sou casado a más de 17 anos eu que tenho que chegar na minha esposa, más era pra ele também fazer a parte dela 🤓👍 eu adoro sé tocado
Nice one Matt. I hope this question doesn’t make me sound like a total Bellend. I’ve always had it in my mind that:
The springs absorb the the energy / shock from the road, so I’ve always thought they were the Shock Absorber’s. The Hydraulic/Gas struts Dampen the spring bounce and are called dampers not shock absorbers (I know they shock absorb as well).
Yes I know it’s a really complex system. If I’m being a total knob please let me know. Take Care.
I’m walking backwards for Christmas this year, just in case. 🤙.
It like trying to seperate what front forks do with front brakes. The forks are there for suspension, and the brakes to stop you, but when you pull the brakes the suspension works, even on a perfectly flat smooth road...
It's actually a big problem for suspension and brakes, and why they made the anti-dive systems and why hub centre steering exists at all.
What about the rate of compression due to the angle of the shocker mountings as in not straight up and down against an angled mounted, different rates i would imagine?
You should do this with a cheap chinese shock as well 🤣
Hay
maybe it's not the temperature,
it could just be High levels of Radiation 😁
Get in there,1st up
@@alexestefanesturbo Apenas toque no seu auto campeão
You been on the parkdrive ciggs or burning blue pallets 😱😂🤣
Air is a Fluid !
Can we go back to sh!tting on Del now? I mean, learning what not to do ft Del. lol
So, what your saying in the end Matt, once you distill down all the info on how shock absorbers work is that these Tec ones are basic in their design and pretty crappily made. Yep thought so too.
GOOD NIGHT OUT THERE 😅😂
in bed by 9:00;😅
Get some heat in there , fog .
Im going to have to disagree with you about the setup being useless. Badly designed, maybe. Untested, without a doubt. but useless? no.
Standard shocks are usually emulsion shocks, where the air lives in the same cavity as the oil. as the shock is in operation said oil is blended together with the air making an emulsion its why on some bikes you will find the suspension feels floaty and gross after 15/20/45 mins of riding.
By having using a bladder (not a balloon) it allows you to keep at least some sort of consistent feel over the duration of a ride, as the oil is separated from the gas. you could go as far as to change the oil weight with this to change the damping characteristics (you wouldn't but I hope you can see my point)
Also, it would have been good it you got the seal head out so we can look at the shimming and valve!
crap, yes, useless not quite, better than oem.......uhhhhh......maybe a Harley :D
"you will find the suspension feels floaty and gross after 15/20/45 mins of riding."
1 - I know what emulsion shocks are but thanks for the lesson. I even did a video about it, long ago in a shed far far away.
2 - I would love to know how you know a rear shock is performing badly on britsh roads and it isn't anything other than the shocks and due to it being an emulsion shock. I'm being serious. Do you have any examples?
3 - bladder or baloon LOL
4 - Keeping the oil seperate from the gas does what? I know what it is said to do, but I wanna hear your explanation why.
5 - I do get your point about oil.
6 - I'll mill the end of the shaft off and get the rod out.
Are they better than any OEM? Probably the same as RE, because I've seen those and I'm sure theyre from the same factory in Shenzhen
I'm curious what information by looking at shim stack you can deduce(because some people in comments want to see it)? In my understanding without knowing dimensions of piston orifices, all shims and do shim calculator you can't understand anything.
A good demonstration of refurbishing a decent shock is found at - ua-cam.com/video/69si7ycPe6Q/v-deo.html it expands on information given here and shows that TEC shocks are only good for dissection?
Another example of TEC shock quality in your friend from Missenden's latest video (from 1:12) ua-cam.com/video/F929r_ftiFc/v-deo.html
Watching and learning all the time♥️👀👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Will you sell me the shock you took apart for half price? 🤔
TEC are budget shocks, it is never going to be the quality of an expensive shock, pointless comparing to a shock would two or 3 times more, you gat it’s budget quality and it’s a budget shock. They are built in a factory, a Chinese factory.
Yes I do, but why is thw question.
I don't think the obvious (poor) quality is the issue - it's simply interesting to show people what is really inside these things and explaining how they work, because people like Del are touting them as quality items that you can use to supersede OEM shocks, which from seeing this is clearly not true.
@@noggintube people use them as a replacement for Royal Enfield shocks and say it’s an improvement, so the starting point is lower, it would have been good to see a HD shock cut in half to compare, one would hope the HD was better, but let’s be honest, HD is not cutting edge with most of their products.
@@johnharvey5338 blimey, I think that says more about RE and HD OEM shocks than anything.
a budget shock isn't a bad thing this thing on the inside is just junk
Looks to me like some Chinese ‘engineers’ got hold of a decent shock, stripped it and copied it….poorly! They worked out what the design does but Not fully understanding what the components need to do and why. Classic example is on ‘Forgotten Weapons’ (I know you watch it!) Chinese warlord pistols… bonkers counterfeit guns copied from real ones and ‘decorative’ safety catches added😆
Shocktopsy
Brilliant video thank u ♥️👀👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Yessssssssss!
2:14 it doesn't squish WTF, it doesn't squash, squeeze, compress. What's happened to the English language for god's sake. The Yanks got hold of it.
Did you film this one in the shower lol
Global change warming climate disaster, causing random extreme fogging.
You could have touched on emulsion shocks
I course have touched on ever shock
@@dirtygarageguy what?
Lol that's not what I meant to type.
I could have touched on every shock... but it would take forever.
@@dirtygarageguy time to bring back the whiteboard videos, still so much you can still dive into, even just in the subject of rear shocks,
If the HD rear brake master cylinder, swingarm, engine cases, fittings and other stuff are anything to go by, this chinese cheap shocks are an improvement over the OEM shocks.
why?
@@dirtygarageguy Just joking Matt. I was taking a stab at the shit stuff HD made. I wouldn't buy anything made by TEC or HD. The sad part is that while TEC are cheap shit, people pay good money for HD products.
👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Crap machining, I'm not shocked... 🧐🤣
What a load of crap . That took you half an hour to explain completely wrong the point of the reservoir. It's to pressurize the oil and allow for the oil displaced by the volume chrome shaft to have somewhere to go. Damping is mainly done by valving on the main piston .
Lol let's go through what you just said.
It's to apply pressure to the oil. Yep said that.
It's for the displaced to have somewhere to go. Yep said that
Damping is mainly done by the valves on the main piston.
Damping is done by the oil. I couldn't or hadn't got to the piston because of the reasons I showed.
I explained that by restricting the oil flow that's how dampening is metered. I also said we're going to go through the entire shock design in the near future with an entire series of videos...
If that's too much for you to understand I wouldn't sub to this channel. We seem to have reached the limit of your intelligence.
😜🏍👍