Re: Softening Honda Unicorn's rear suspension

I also have same problem on my Uni 150 2017 bs4 model. The rear suspension feels really hard while riding solo.Today i am going to change both tires to ceat zoom tubeless tires.

Re: Softening Honda Unicorn's rear suspension

Same problem in my hornet too. Honda doesn't know how to design suspension. It's not at all suitable for indian road conditions.

Re: Softening Honda Unicorn's rear suspension

If you find a way, let me know. I am also fed up with hard suspension even after adjusting to softest level it's of no use !!

Re: Softening Honda Unicorn's rear suspension

Try a soft/medium compound. Siracs worked great on uni for me. Mrf, Apollo, ceat, most have hard compounds.

Mine is a 2009 model 150cc unicorn, Just before the launch of CB unicorn. My bike was good in part of rear suspension for almost 5-6 years. After that the mono suspension started leaking. I gave it to the nearby shock absorber repairing shop in the town. He opened it up and showed that one cone shaped hard rubber bush was weared off in it. After the oil leakage, that bush was only getting pressed with the piston inside the suspension. So he replaced with another bush from old similar suspension. He filled new oil and might have replaced some seals. I don't remember it clearly. But it doesn't made any difference even after paying 500/- for repairing + fitting charges of 300/-. So after some days I bought a new mono suspension for 2500/- from the EVM Honda and after replacing it with the brand new original spare and local labour charge of 300/- again made no difference. The old cushioning sound "ssss" coming even passing a small gutter was totally missing. If it was functioning as before that sound should had come. I was totally disappointed. After a couple of years I approached marikkar honda and expressed my issue. The service advisor told me that mono suspension replacement is the only way. So I again confirmed the service manager that if no change occurs then I won't accept the replacement. After that also nothing changed. I had to argue for long with the bloody service manager and due to my huge pressure he proposed to replace the both swingarm needle bearings in front of me. After checking the removed the stock bearings, the left side was good but the right side one was defective. They installed a new set of bearings in it by hitting with some hammer or mallet hammer in front of me. It felt little better after this. So I argued to take back the mono shock because it was unnecessarily done. But it ended in a quarrel between me and service manger. But all gone in vain. I was left with 2 spare monoshocks worth a 2500/- each. unfortunately all these done didn't gave satisfactory results. A couple of years passed, in the 1st phase of nationwide lockdown I traveled 1500 km for two days to my wife's place as she was at her home in that time. I was just amazed by the performance of my 11 year old bike. I felt that this bike needed more care. The ride quality was very pitty. my buttock was gone. The pain lasted for almost a week. After 2 months I had to ride back home as no public transport were restarted. I had to change my route due to avoid some highly covid critical places. But this route was tougher one. It took 2.5 days to complete 1500 km. For my Quarantine period I gone through so many youtube videos of unicorn and found one genuine Mechanic Mr Ezhilmaran's channel The "Two wheeler Surgon". He explained in his video that the needle bearings of the swingarm stay should be installed without beating and only by giving the swing arm and 2 sets of bearings to the lathe shop. There they can fix the bearings using hydraulic press or some other techniques. Two sets of bearings can be used for better action against the Mfr configuration of 1 set. While hitting these bearings with hammer will damage the bearings as I saw once the needles coming out of new bearings.
So I experimented the lathe shop and it also doesn't made any difference. I replaced the repaired mono shock and found the rear suspension working almost fine.

Conclusion: there might be some difference between old and new mono suspensions.
bearings should be replaced in lathe shop only.