On the rear spring I use a length of half inch by half inch solid square aluminium about a foot long and a hammer. The aluminium, being softer than the collars tends to damage rather than the collars.
You might need to clean up (file square again) the end of the ali every now and then but using this method has left me with completely unmarked collars.

nice tip! sure beats a screwdriver...
jeff h

man, i love my s4. The suspension is top notch. I had a sit on a cbr600f of a friend of mine (it used to be the track bike of his brother) it was like sitting in a Cadillac. The suspension was WAAAAYYYYY to soft. In fact, it was so soft he could take speed bumps with a speed of 100 km/h. Insane.

Originally Posted by pete

In case someone's interested, I took the S4 to the track yesterday and adjusted the suspension a bit. I think I got it pretty well set up. Before applying these, set the preloads correctly i.e. so that the front suspension sags 35-45mm and the rear suspension 30-40mm from free (wheel in the air) length when you sit on the bike. I have both set to 35mm. The numbers are clicks from fully in Front Compression 1 Front Rebound 2 Rear Compression 1 Rear Rebound 3 Front tire Pirelli Diablo Corsa, pressure 2.1 bar Rear tire Michelin Pilot Power, pressure 1.9 bar Too bad I ran out of track time, I would have wanted to try lower tire pressures, but at least the direction is good. I think I got it a lot better. [ This message was edited by: pete on 2006-09-18 09:30 ]

Update.
Finally I got the front to act like I want with a Power front. Apparently it's much harder than Pirelli, since the suspension had to be so much softer. I did 300-ish km on the track, there was hardly any tyre wear - with the harder suspension (oh well it was warmer then aswell) the front Power wore terribly in just 100kms. The grip was excellent and the turn in was sharp, for a road tyre

Relatively cool weather, tyres Power/Power

Front:
Tyre pressure 2.1 bar
Compression 3 clicks
Rebound 4 clicks
Front lowered by 5mm

Rear:
Tyre pressure 2.0 bar
Compression 2 clicks
Rebound 3 clicks

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FART FYRA

I dialed in the suspension using the PB Road settings but can't get to 44 threads of rear preload. I realize that the settings were specified for the TT600.

By lowering the collars all the way down, the most I can get is 32 threads above. I'm 99% sure the shock is OEM (Kayaba?). How many threads are other S4 owners running. I weigh 185 without gear. Thanks in advance.

The preload is used solely to set the suspension height to be correct. Please don't use and mag settings for preload, measure it yourself, so that it suits your weight!

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FART FYRA