Scooby,
you said some thing about stiffening the preload up. you stiffen it by making the spring tighter. there are treads on top of the shock. How many turns did you turn it???

 

I weigh 170lbs. I'm not sure exactly how many turns. I loosened the locking nut, jacked the DS up, and then rotated the rear shock many turns to stiffen up the pre-load - wear gloves if you get blisters easily! Maybe an inch, not real sure. I think the distance from the top of the threads to the top of the spring was almost doubled. I loosened up the compression damping afterwards. I stiffened up the front shock preload as well. If you don't, the rearend will be much higher than the frontend and it can feel like you will be thrown over the handlbars. Just experiment with the settings until you are happy. If you loosen the front shock preload the frontend dives, and drives me nuts. Stiffening the front preload seeming to help the steering slightly. A steering stabilizer may be a better solution. Note that the air pressure you run in the front tires has a DRAMATIC effect on steering! If you lower the pressure too much it becomes hyper-sensitive, if you increase the pressure too much there is no bite. Adjusting the suspension improved the handling quite a bit.

 

How in the world did you tighten the spring, I jack the DS up and I could not get it to turn. Did you use a spring clamp?? I have tried the front ones yet but i'm sure they will be a pain.
Did you have to take shock off or what???

 

HALL650, There are two adjusting cams/rings at the top of the rear spring, not just one. The top cam locks the spring from turning. You need to loosen the top cam so that the spring will turn. I had trouble loosening the top cam/ring. I tried using a large flathead screwdriver and a hammer to try an rotate the cam/ring counterclockwise. It was so tight and I didn't feel comfortable hammering so hard. Since I had a sqeaking problem with the rear shock I ended up removing the bolt that holds the rear shock to the frame under the seat. I jacked the DS way up and was able to position the shock better so I could put a wrench on the cam/ring to loosen it. I don't think you'll need to go through all of this though. See here for some pics:

http://www.bombardierds650.com/revie...lerinstall.htm

Once you loosen the top cam/ring you should be able to rotate the rear spring with the DS jacked up, using both hands. The pre-load is set very low and you won't need to compress the spring to free it up. Once the spring starts to turn it goes fairly easy.

As for the fronts, they were fairly easy. Just jack the DS up and grab hold of the front spring with both hands and start turning. Once it starts to turn it goes fairly easy. Just be sure to set both springs at the exact same position. Measure the distance from top to bottom of each spring and/or measure how far you moved the spring up from the stop ring located at the bottom of each shock.