Perhaps you’re a street rider looking to have more fun on your spirited Sunday morning canyon blasts, or, maybe you find the closed-circuit confine of your local trackday provider more appealing? Regardless of your playground, if you’re looking to extort full performance from that fancy motorcycle and expensive round, black rubber you need a Penske Racing Shock.
Penske Racing Shocks 8987 Triple Adjustable Shock Absorber retails for $1195 and is built to order.
We tested their racing-spec 8987-series damper on a
2008 Yamaha YZF-R1. Designed as a direct replacement to the original Soqi piece, installation was a snap, requiring the use of basic set of metric tools, a rear stand and two jack stands (to un-weight the swingarm, allowing you to slip out the shock from the bottom).
The shock itself features an aluminum body and has a very high-quality look and feel. A properly rated steel spring, matched to your body weight ensures that the shock will be tailored to you. And before it’s shipped, it’s tested it on the company’s shock dyno ensuring proper functionality.
The stock Soqi shock (below) uses a ramp-style adjuster to modify preload and quickly runs out of adjustment. The Penske uses a threaded collar and with the correct spring has plent of adjustment for use on either the street or track.
Similarly to the OE component, the Penske features adjustable spring preload, separate high/low-speed compression and rebound damping. But that’s where the similarities end. With the Penske you get the ability to a adjust ride height (+/-12mm), allowing you to compensate for different tire sizes and profiles. The range of spring preload and clicker adjustment is also substantially wider yet also more precise, giving you 30/18 clicks of high/low-speed compression and 34-clicks of rebound adjustability.
Before you hit the streets, Penske recommends you set the sag for optimum performance (see sidebar). With preload set at the recommended base line, cruising down the street reveals a substantially firmer ride, which for most will border on being too harsh. However, simply remove a full turn or two of preload via the supplied and easy-to-use tool and everyday comfort is restored.
Control, feel, confidence. All by products of Penske's 8987-series rear shock absorber.
But posing around the street isn’t what the shock is designed to do. And at an elevated street pace or on the racetrack, you can’t help but notice the vastly improved action, rear-end feel and subsequent increase in control afforded by the shock. With the stocker we’d routinely run out of adjustment which would not only limit how fast we could lap but also caused excessive tire wear. But with the Penske, no matter which racetrack we’re at, there’s always plenty of adjustment to get our lap times down while compensating for tire wear.
Once we determined our best baseline setting, no matter which racetrack we rode, optimum setup was never far off. Fine tuning the shock’s preload and either compression adjustment knobs is especially simple. However, the rebound adjustment knob located on the bottom of the shock is difficult to access and is exasperated when the bike is hot due to the close proximity of the exhaust pipe. If you ever do run out of adjustment range, the shock can be disassembled and serviced by the user or it can be shipped off to the folks at Penske and they can modify the internals based on your specific needs.
Without question, Penske’s 8987-series shock impressed us. Not only did it allow us to lap more quickly, it gave us added confidence, increased feel, longer tire life, and exposed just how sweet an R1 can handle with a simple bolt-on piece.
MSRP: $1195
Penske Racing Shocks
150 Franklin Street
Reading, Pennsylvania 19602
(610) 375-6180
www.penskeshocks.com
