Wilbers suspension - not good!

[Every Accessory]

I do understand your concerns but let me assure you, These are superb quality shocks and just unfortunate he had problems with wilbers. If you surf the net you will see customers having similar problems with all the major brands!

 

[(RIP) Kaister]

Margus ( tsilokonaut) post has put me right off wilbers now.

Ive also had similar feelings about ohlins .

I think he's right - how come aftermarket car shocks don't fall apart ?

Could be down to the materials ?

Road racing round the isle of man is hard - but not as hard on a shock as 2 up fully loaded for days on end.

C'mon mr wilbers all accessory - put your reputation on the line and send him a proper 'off-road' shock - if it doesn't break, then it'll still be my first choice over someone else - until then...mmmm...no way

'sponsor' him it - if you wiill

 

[Funners]

I've run WP suspension, NO thanks, leaks like a sieve, I spent more time replacing seals than riding the thing, Ohlins was OK but again leaked a lot and as evidenced by E&C prone to blowing under extreme use
I've also used fancy pants Bilstein suspension in a car and under extreme use guess what ? Yep that blew too.
No suspension unit on the planet is gonna take thousands and thousands of miles fo extreme abuse. and as for OE ones ? well mine was bolloxed inside 3000 miles...
Wilbers and Every Accessory have impressed me no end so far, and are every bit as good if not better than the Ohlins I had on my last bike.
just my 2p !

 

[Micky]

Didn't Micky use them, ie Wilbers, on his long trip on the 650? IIRC he had no problems with them.

We couldn't fault the Wilbers for sure, they behaved and were as good as new on our return. I most certainly wouldn't fit Öhlins. While great units I don't think (read 'Know' 'cos I've had them) that the Öhlins are up to winter use or every day use. OK for the race track and posing with outside McDonalds!

I'll still be going for Wilbers for the F800GS when ready

I hope it's just a one off situation Margus, hope too that you get sorted.

 

[Big Lee]

well if it's good enough to be OE equipment in KTMs,I guess it may be a good upgrade for a BMW !!

My 54 plate 12 has oe WP suspension

 

[motobiker]

Makes me smile that one person has a problem and then so many people overreact.

However 1,000s of owners worldwide have massive problems with the 1200 and sales continue to rise and rise.... it doesn't seem to put off many prospective owners that visit this site anyway.

Just as 1,000s of people worldwide had huge problems with the first 1100's (how the airhead owners laughed)

I have a great deal of time for Margus - his posts are always well thought through and worth reading.

But I think these shocks are fantastic for the money - its often said 'you get what you pay for' and I think that makes these shocks an absolute bargain... and made the mass produced crappy finished OE showas look like absolute rubbish.
I'm lucky as 'Every Accessory' is just 45 miles away - so if I was off to South America I would be there to get my shocks rebuilt to suit. I tend to think that something went wrong with Margus's original order.

As I said in my first post. Charlie and Ewan didn't exactly have a great experience with Ohlins - did they?

 

[Timolgra]

So I decided to put on the Wilbers for our RTW trip with stronger spring hoping it'd last.

...wrong answer.

......

 

[motobiker]

Makes me smile that one person has a problem and then so many people overreact.

However 1,000s of owners worldwide have massive problems with the 1200 and sales continue to rise and rise.... it doesn't seem to put off many prospective owners that visit this site anyway.

Just as 1,000s of people worldwide had huge problems with the first 1100's (how the airhead owners laughed)

I have a great deal of time for Margus - his posts are always well thought through and worth reading.

But I think these shocks are fantastic for the money - its often said 'you get what you pay for' and I think that makes these shocks an absolute bargain... and made the mass produced crappy finished OE showas look like absolute rubbish.
I'm lucky as 'Every Accessory' is just 45 miles away - so if I was off to South America I would be there to get my shocks rebuilt to suit. Or if that wasn't possible have them ensure that the shocks I order for the trip are the correct spec and up to the task.

I tend to think that something went wrong with Margus's original order.

As I said in my first post. Charlie and Ewan didn't exactly have a great experience with Ohlins - did they?

.

 

[lkyphl]

For what it's worth, my rear Wilbers have lost the gas pressure twice in about 60k kms, 98% sealed road riding. The importer had "never seen it happen before" .....

The independant bloke I FINALLY got to tune them up reckons the quality of the internals was not quite up to the standard of Ohlins shocks.

Good things, OEM shocks,

Phil

 

[Rich C]

Tough question this. The last thing you want on a trip is the bike failing regularly. My OE shock (1150GSA) had virtuallly no damping left after 8000 road miles. In hot weather damping had to be on full to prevent wallowing and shite handling and that was one up. Two up with luggage was impossible.

So bought a rear Willbers from EA and have been delighted with it. A top bit of kit. However have only used it in Europe.

Considering how many people are out there travelling there must be a sales opportunity for a range of aftermarket shocks available in RTW spec or an upgrade to OE to do the same job?

 

[Tsiklonaut]

Let's not to get this thread into "mine's better than yours" thread.

I did order directly from Wilbers in Germany. They set it up for my needs in the factory: 2 up full of luggage travelling, for which they added stronger spring and gave me the factory preload and dampening adjustments specifically for my purpose. Can't see how my original order or setup was wrong?

Beating it to life again in every few thousand miles (with a huge effort and hassle finding a specialist and £££ every time) is IMHO not worth it. I'd gladly repair it once or in a last resort twice per less than 10,000miles. But three times is just beyond me.

Anyways, it's a big money and travelling time lost for me. Hopefully this explains my reaction.

 

[lkyphl]

I did order directly from Wilbers in Germany. They set it up for my needs in the factory: 2 up full of luggage travelling, for which they added stronger spring and gave me the factory preload and dampening adjustments specifically for my purpose. Can't see how my original order or setup was wrong?

Mine were also "set up for my needs from the factory", and after several months of them being obviously wrong, with numerous unsatisfactory trips back to the importer, I requested he set them up identically to those on my 1150. When he opened 'em up, he found the factory had fitted the wrong shim stacks in both the front and rear shocks. I've since paid for softer springs, and finally had another bloke test the shocks on his shock dyno, softening the front compression damping by 30%, the rear by a lesser amount.
Now instead of the 'bars leaping upwards under high-speed compression, the fork sliders leap upwards. The ride is now considerably better than the factory "preset". Pardon my scepticism,

Phil

 

[alimey4u2]

I had to send two replacement Hagon's (not free of charge from Hagon to be added) to friends of mine who went through Africa two years ago. Fitted the Hagon's with uprated springs for two up + luggage the works they still did not last.

Margus basically you are riding in 3rd world country with some realy bad roads, this is the factor never researched enough to realise that there is hardly any shocks/tyres/bikes etc that will cope with all 100% all the time. This is hard core travelling mate and part of your adventure so suck it up and don't let the little small set backs get in your way or your mind

I have a WP spring on my R80GS, been rebuild and checked, this still did not prevent it from starting to piss oil out after three day's on what I considered smooth gravel riding in Africa Was considering the wilbers or Ohlins but think I might just go with bog standard OEM shock this time around

By the looks of it you should of rather bought 3 x OEM shocks = 150k miles which would of more than likely been better for your trip.

Let me just say I said that Hagon "repair shocks" in reference only. I did say (in passing) to the Hagon representitive at a notable motorcycle show recently " You do know they rust.... Right ?" ( They do... ) I also said at the Laverda club stand "Where's the V-6 then ?"....& scurried off....

Oh got 517.50 quid saved to lay down on my other set of Ohlins....My additional Christmas present, cos I've been soooo good...

 

[Aussie]

I had to rebuild my front Ohlin after finding a 30 or 40 cm. deep hole hiding in the dust at about 130 kph. No trouble rebuilding it, anyone know how to take a ding out of a BMW rim

 

[alimey4u2]

I had to rebuild my front Ohlin after finding a 30 or 40 cm. deep hole

The American mechanic who installed my Ohlin shocks recommended that I remove & rotate the front shock 180 degrees after 10,000 miles.. Anyone else had similar advise ?

 

[Tsiklonaut]

The American mechanic who installed my Ohlin shocks recommended that I remove & rotate the front shock 180 degrees after 10,000 miles.. Anyone else had similar advise ?

I suppose it does in terms of seal-, rod- and shaft-wear. Most of shocks aren't fully vertically positioned, so gravity works agains them - one side wears more. By flipping it should, in theory, better even-out the wear of the seals, bore and piston rod (normally it get's polished on one side and one spot = worn = leaky shock).

 

[Tsiklonaut]

An update

...And yesterday we did 600km of smooth tarmac only - my newly rebuilt Wilbers leaked again. So it went to get it's 4th rebuild.

My Wilbers warranty is over, no hope to any help from them so I could experiment with it and find the reasons why it's been doing so bad for me.

First of all the overall design of Wilbers - tube+cap design for the pressurized part is maybe not the best way to go.

Cap from beneath.

We found some variance in the cap radius (not a perfect circle). Meaning it will make the tube slightly oval from one end and - if the shock piston hits the upper part of the tube it may have "squeeze-effect" for the moving details that drag against the tube wall.

The cap didn't "teeth" well with the tube too. I.e. in one side you see the contact marks:

And on the other side of the circle it was hardly noticable:

This could also be un-evenly cut tube from one end and in theory shouldn't affect the overall performance or reliability of the shock, but enough to notice "bad manners" on manufacturing the details.

I let a new cap to be machined to have more precision:

The new aluminium is considerably stronger than the original alu that was relatively soft and thus probably more prone to go out of shape and have "teething" problems. Hopefully the new cap sorts out the ovality problem for the tube.

The emulsion-type shock body design concept in comparison: Öhlins pressurized part in one solid chassis IMHO making it considerably more stable solution compared to Wilber's separate tube+cap solution:

From where I can see why Wilbers was cheaper than Öhlins for my bike - I reckon it's noticeably cheaper to CNC-machine small more simple cap to combine with (cheapish?) tube instead to CNC out a whole big complicated upper part like Öhlins does.

And indeed my Wilbers leaked from between the cap. It is thread-glued on the tube making it prone to twist or leak - i.e. if you need to adjust the spring preload you need a supporting spot, which is normally the top cap to hold the shock still while you adjust the preload.

It also weirdly leaked from inside the piston rod (small diameter pipe), which I can fine no other reason than a bad inner-seal (small o-ring)?

Anyways, altough with some sense of humor as seen on some pics, this thread IS NOT about making look Wilbers bad. It is just to argument and let the more suspension-experienced guys give their word about my (non-specialist but hopefully logically-put) observations.

So tech-gurus, give us your input!

I've now put brand new Öhlins on, let's see how it does under our abuse.

Ride safe, Margus

 

[Timolgra]

Very interesting thread Margus, I was about to buy a Wilbers fitted with stiffer spring etc. for my trip to Mongolia and the 'Stans' in a few months.

Now I'm unsure what to do, the trip will be very tough on the bikes and a knackered shock is the last thing I need.

My present thoughts are, to use an OEM shock possibly with a stiffer spring or to investigate WP which is fitted to 3 of my other bikes and no problems despite hard use. But WP could be too expensive.
The OEM currently fitted has only done around 13k miles.

Ohlins?? Hmmm I'm not sure

But from what I've seen here and I appreciate a Wilburs spokeman will disagree, the proof is in the pudding as they say, Wilburs is off my list of options unless I'm convinced otherwise.

Good luck with

 

[jez]

Hi Margus, did you realise that Wilbers give a five yearwarranty according to their website so in theory all that work should've been gratis under the warranty. http://www.wilbers.de/2008/englisch/html/sports_classic_line.htm

 

[Tsiklonaut]

Hi Margus, did you realise that Wilbers give a five yearwarranty according to their website so in theory all that work should've been gratis under the warranty. http://www.wilbers.de/2008/englisch/html/sports_classic_line.htm

Hi Jez,

Unfortunately I have all my Wilbers-buy papers at home and I remembered something about 1 year written on it, I could be wrong tho. But anyways the only Wilbers dealer is in Chile in South-America, too far to reach where I've had mine broken. (hence why I chose Öhlins this time)