Thanks again to all for watching and taking the time to comment.
I think the ride is pretty good, especially for a hard tail. My first bike was a hard tail and I started with a frame mounted foam seat. It was pain full to ride up here in the land of 1 million pot holes. So I knew I wanted to improve on that.
The front suspension has got 5 inches of travel and the seat has about 2 inches measured under the middle of my butt or about 3 inches if you measure at the back edge of the seat. There are o-rings on the plunger of the shock that get pushed by the travel that indicate the max compression since the last time you pushed it tight to the upper half of the shock. They recommend setting the 'sag' to around 20-25% of travel by adjusting air pressure. The o-rings are handy for this and recording the max travel after a ride.
I logged several hundred miles in shakedown. After a ride with no quick stops or speed bumps both seat and fork shocks have a max compression of about 3/4 of full travel. Locking up the front tire will push the front to full travel. I have not seen the seat go full travel yet and I've already run some pretty rough roads.
The shocks are designed to run to 250 psi if needed. The ones I'm using are cheaper ones, more expensive ones can run up to 300 psi. I run the fork shock at about 150 psi and the seat shock at about 80. I like that you can dial in the spring rate. If I know a riders weight I can change the pressure to set the sag and spring rate to match the rider weight. The shock pump is small enough to pack in the tool kit if you want. You can also set the damping rate from almost nothing to a very slow compression/rebound.
I'd use this suspension set up again. I like the lines of a hard tail and the ride I get with the seat on shock is pretty smooth. The front fork works great and you have to keep yourself from watching it too much
About the only thing I can feel is on big bump the back tire will lose contact with road for an instant. But for typical road conditions here in north the suspension works pretty well.
It definitely tracks straighter than stock with the extra length, I went from about 58 inches axle to axle to 71. Due the power and weight distribution I can't do either a 'stoppy' or a 'wheely' but as a pretty conservative rider I actually kind of like that. I kept the pegs high and as tight to the center line as I could to facilitate turning at speed. It feels stable in the turns to me.
It came in about 325 pounds with gas and oil. I think it feels like it's got a little more acceleration than stock just due the weight loss.
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