Always used progressive in the past, but on my fat a$$ dresser, they never gave me the ride I was looking for. That said, I also bought the cheapest and shortest ones, so that figures. They had great customer service, respringing a set just for the labor cost, still no joy. Moral? Long travel is your friend, and the higher the price the better the ride.

 

Personally, I would replace the oil of the stock shocks with 10wt Amsoil synthetic. There are a lot of posts in this forum on how to do it.

If your shocks are beat up, you can get a new take off set in ebay for under $100 (and still replace the oil).

That's what I did and really like the results...

 

Funny how you see a lot of the same folks pop up in suspension threads. Weird coincidence?

That being said, the difference in the 412/430/440/940 lines is ride quality and warranty. The higher the number sequence the higher end shock it is and the better the ride, adjustability and in addition to that the 430, 440 and 940 series are guaranteed for life.

Here's a little more info http://www.progressivesuspension.com/drpattour.html

For your weight/bike and assuming you are putting some miles on it, the 440 Series with a heavy duty spring will ride very nicely and is easily tuned to adjust for solo runs as well.

 

I have 440's on my FLHTPI, I weigh 250, I may or may not have a passenger at any given time, but I find them easily adjustable and they give a nice ride when the tire pressure is set to 42 PSI (you do know the tire acts as a spring and pressure is everything right?)

My HD guru has a Progressive fork kit waiting for me to get the bike down to him to install.

HD Suspension Sucks, period end of discussion. They use the cheapest crap out there and SHOWA should be ashamed to make such crap. If they were branding it with the parent company name (Hond*) they never would have let it out of the plant.

If you have money to burn Ohlins are THE bike suspension product, but I don't want to spend what the bike is worth to get the stuff, and on my jap bikes it would cost about 4G/bike to do Ohlins

 

Your combined weight is a bit more than me and my wife when two up. We got the 440s with HD springs recently and couldn't be happier when riding together. A thing you didn't mention was your inseam/ride height. The shocks you mention come in varying lengths. I got the 13 1/2 in (me 35" inseam, no problem with ride height) so we could have the extra travel in the shocks.

FWIW when we're together, we're at 6 turns in of preload (of 10-11 available). Note that the 440 does not need tools to adjust; just by hand. You and your wife may be at 5 turns or so for a nicer ride IMO, since I have more weight directly above the axle (meaning my wife's a bit heavier than yours).

Based on my experience, my "rule of thumb" (cuz I haven't seen one yet before on here) is that I'll add a 1/2 turn for each 15 lbs of (passenger, luggage, "extra" crap, etc.) starting from no preload for just me and my "regular" crap.

BUT I also have to agree with Bagger Al; it's a firm ride for me solo. When I ride solo (I'm 190), I'm at no pre-load and I put one 10 lb rock in each saddle bag (along with my "regular" crap of tools, first aid kit, small kitchen sink, etc.) -- so probably about 15 lbs total in each saddle bag just to loosen the ride up. At your weight (no disrespect intended) you may not have that issue; that info may be of more interest to others searching for this info. I sure couldn't find any specifics when I searched...

 

"Will ride very nicely"....is a broad statement. Listen I respect the hell out of "Progressive" but I'm the guy who paid a lil over 6 hundred bucks for my 440's....and I'll reserve the right to tell you if they ride "Very Nicely" or not.

My idea of a "nice ride" is not so different than my expectations of a nice ride in my car....

I expect the bike to handle bumps and not throw me off the seat.
I'd like to have some degree of floating over the bumps without bottoming out.

While I don't quite get "thrown off" the seat, it's not the smoothest ride over bigger bumps by any means. It doesnt float down and gently respond back. It hit's the bumps with more stiffness than not. The good part is it doesnt bottom out like my stock shocks did.

From a consumer point of view I thought for this amount of $$ that the ride would be better. JMO. PS - I'm 6 feet 235 lbs and I have the shocks at the softest setting and ride solo.

 

^^^^

I totally agree with you. I can't settle on which suspension to go with either because a "nice ride" simply isn't enough for me to commit $400-$600 to when I hear lots of conflicting statements.

I'm 180, I ride 2-up a lot and when 2-up we're at around 300 even. The stock shock is *USABLE* at literally 5-8psi (or sometimes less) with me on it, and like 17 when 2-up. Anymore than that and I'm being pogo'd off the thing on any significant bump. The last thing I want to do is buy a shock (any shock for that matter) that has that same "harsh" feeling when encountering a bump.

I ride a BMW RT1200 a lot (don't like the bike, but the suspension is plush) and while I can feel each and every bump in the road, it doesn't JAR the bike and subsequently, my ***. This is what I'm looking for on my $20,000 bike... I know I'm not the only one. So, keep the solutions coming!

 

Thanks for all your input. You guys and this site are awesome.Sounds like the 440's or 940's are the way to go. I just dont know about spending 600 bucks on shocks.

 

I went with the 440s because I didn't need the lowering effect of the 940s. The lowest price I could find was at http://www.onestopmoto.com/ and got the 440s for $476.95. They were in stock, shipped quick, and I had a good vendor experience.