One of the many things this motorcycle needed was a set of new shock absorbers. That's right, absorbers plural, because this is still a wonderfully antiquated twin-shock model. In the 1980s BMW moved to single-sided swingarms that it has refined with various torque reaction arms over the years (to overcome the inherent issues of having a drive shaft on a motorcycle, dummies!) and never looked back. Anyway, where was I... oh yeah, we need new shocks. In an effort to save some money and also to use what we have, I thought about repurposing a pair of FAC (Fabbrica Ammortizzatori Cremona) shocks that I originally had on my Fastback, but that I eventually set aside as they were too short. Unfortunately, since the spring they use is also too short and too soft for the /7, that just turned out to be a very long detour to a dead end.
So, in the end I had to source a new pair of shock absorbers, and the winning ticket was a set of cheap and cheerful YSS Bravo. These are very basic but will do just fine for what we need this motorcycle to do; here's one next to one of the OEM items:
Sure, the original Boge shocks are very neat in that they have a built-in handle to adjust the preload, and we lose that feature here; but these YSS are going to work just fine. Installation was very easy and straightforward, thanks to BMW's rational layout of all components involved.
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