I can finally report back on my Elka stage one shocks that I had sitting in my garage for three months.
first thing, they are crazy expensive. And I’m still puzzled why we can’t have any shocks for these little machines that are in the hundred to $150 each range. But I can tell you the build quality looks amazing and I suspect that they will hold up for a long time, and of course rebuildable at some point in time.
After bouncing around on Rocky trails in Wyoming for a week, I can tell you the ride is significantly better. Yes, I have 27 inch radial tires on the P520, so some of the credit has to go to those big tires with low air pressure. They allowed my wife and I to travel over pretty bumpy stuff at a decent pace. I would say even through the roughest stuff I was going 5 miles an hour faster than I would a year ago. A year ago where I was going 5 miles an hour going from Boulder to Boulder, this year I could go around 9 to 10 miles an hour and felt pretty comfortable.
of course it’s not all about speed, overwash boards and rutted areas the pioneer felt more controlled and planted. I did bottom them out a couple times on some larger boulders hit too fast, but that should be easy for me to fix with a little pre-load adjustment.
in fact this afternoon after cleaning up my pioneer, I started to adjust preload on the passenger side as I’ve always felt like it has listed a little bit to the passenger side. And looking at things closer, I can tell that the front end is sitting a little bit lower than the rear end of the machine. Of course I didn’t take measurements before and after all of the items I added, so I can’t remember if there was a significant difference in clearance between the front of the machine and the rear of the machine. If anyone can tell me if the frame rails are supposed to sit relatively even, I can go out and start making adjustments. To my eye, it looks like the rear of the machine is sitting roughly an inch and a half higher than the front of the machine and the frame rails are not perpendicular to the ground front to rear. If that makes any sense?
The bottom line is, I would totally buy them again. Even at the high price. My wife drove our little P520 around in the mountains and at home after we got back. She pronounced it was a totally different machine now. Some of the credit goes to the power steering which she absolutely loves, but the ride is so much better than a year ago before the modifications happened.
Rob
