Rear suspension linkages

[Neo]

Hi All,

Could someone please go to the trouble of explaining the principal of how the delta link setup works on the rear suspension?

A why Beta makes a fuss over Link-less suspension – what’s the advantage, if any?

Many thanks.

Neo

[David Lahey]

Linkless rear suspension has some real world advantages:

It costs less to make a bike with less parts
It weighs less
There are less bearings to service or to replace when they fail

By the way Scorpas as well as Betas have linkless rear ends and they both work great.

[BJ]

Neo

The too bikes with the rear suspension I like most are the Scorpa and Beta, obviously the linkless appeals to me because it is a more fluid type of ride and helps even beginers like me get the back end to lift. Need I say the Beta just does not have what I am looking for in the rest of the package.

I agree with David on the moving parts. It takes ages to pull down, clean and lubricate the rear end of a Sherco, on the other hand it is not something you need to do every week but there is an awful lot of roller bearings in there to look after just the same.

[Neo]

Hi Gents,

Thanks for your responses.

I guess what I’m looking for here guys, is also a technical explanation as to what the linkages are doing? Why they are there and how they work? I've looked at them hard and I guess they provide some form of leverage but I can’t really see how?


Best of balance.

Neo

[David Lahey]

Yes Neo, linkage arrangements are intended to provide progressively reducing leverage on the shockie as the swingarm moves upwards. Yes it is hard to see how it works on a bike and it is even harder to try and explain it in words. I'm don't want to even try.

Linkage designs appeared on mass produced MX and enduro bikes in the late 1970s and Yamaha finally bit the bullet and replaced their original non-linkage monoshock design with a linkage design in the early 1980s. The various arrangements used by different manufacturers had many different names and were advertised as providing a "rising rate" suspension action. This meant that the leverage on the shockie reduced as the swingarm moved upwards so the spring and damping rates rate became effectively stiffer as the swingarm moved upwards.

Yamaha introduced linkage rear suspension to the mass produced trials bike market in 1984 with the first TY monoshock.

Twenty five years after the introduction of linkage rear ends, they are gradually falling out of favour as manufacturers seek ways to make their bikes more compact, weigh less and cost less to produce.

[r2wtrials]

On the other side of the coin... have you ever priced up a replacement shock for a Rev3... on this side of the world they are bloody expensive and more than outweigh the cost and extra attention that the linkage need.

[Neo]

Hi r2wtrials,

Not too sure what you’re saying here?

Is the suspension on a bike with linkages less likely to have problems with it rear shock?

Or is it that link-less suspension bikes have very expensive shocks?


Best of bounce.

Neo

[r2wtrials]

it is half a dozen of one and 6 of the other!!

The links are not too much of a problem if you just do a bit of maintenance every so often.. and they perform very well. The Linkless shocks do all the rising rate via the internals of the shock so are often very much more expensive to make and buy...

After riding all the 2005 bikes back to back at a test day on a rocky section i marked out i will say that the Beta followed the ground the best... but the Pro seemed to allow me to kick the back off the ground and up better. When riding over loose boulders the Beta was very smooth... but it must be said that you do notice the extra weight of it. This may actually help it be smoother. The pro is very light and it is easy to kick off things and off line.
Both work very well and when the bikes are newer then the linkless system is great.. what i wouldn't want to do is have to buy a replacement shock for one when it does give up the ghost!!