I also put the Debonair air can on. I need very high pressures - 340psi for my 95kg body weight - to have even a chance of decent sag on it and even then it's 35% and I prefer 25-28% but it does now give full travel and is more plush than the standard can. A couple of observations;
1/ I've put two bottomless bands in the negative air chamber to try to get better sag and a better mid-stroke support and have left the volume reducer out as discussed in my previous posts so I now have a huge positive air chamber and quite a small negative one which seems to give a more linear support across the entire stroke length (try saying that to your mates or missus in the pub after a few pints!)
2/ I may experiment with even more bands in the negative chamber to, as far as possible, get rid of it as much as I can whilst retaining the large volume positive one to ensure I keep getting full travel out of it. I don't feel the negative chamber is helping much at my weight as the seal friction is proportionately much less than it would be for a smaller rider. It also, due to the pressure transfer port position in the can, seems to make it very hard to get a decent sag setting.
3/ The damping is better but still crap compared with the standard can. The rebound is much better, probably due to the lower pressures as the shock ramps up. Previously it was too fast even set on full slow. No, in fact, it was just uncontrolled. I think this was because the shock ramped up so aggressively that the rebound was too slow on small bumps and way too fast on big ones so it was like riding an uncontrolled pogo-stick especially when sitting down and hitting rollers whilst pedalling. The compression has gone from being 'about right' to 'too slow' which would need a revalve. I generally find all modern shocks too slow in compression. I don't know why, probably because it makes the bike pedal better but I, personally, don't like it as it makes the shock crap on small, fast 'stutter' bumps and I'd trade a bit of pedalling performance to get that especially where I live in the Alps.
4/ The shock is just generally 'slow', like it moves in treacle. I think this is as much to do with seal drag as damping and probably inherent to air shocks. It might get better as the seals and bushes run in like forks do. It's just more noticable now that we have a reasonable ramp-up pressure in the shock and it's not going from 250 to 1000 psi in 45mm, more like half that so you feel the drag and damping a lot more.
5/ I tend to agree with Karsten that for the bigger lads amongst us a coil is going to be the way forward. Let's be honest I could give up a couple of beers and a pork-pie a week and I'd soon be matching the extra weight of a coil setup in my own weight loss (in fact a good crap in the morning probably does this) and an e-bike is heavy anyway so 500g is nowt, nothing, bugger all in the scheme of things for decent performance when you've already added 7kg of motor and battery and about 15kg of beer gut.
To that end I'm also in contact with TF Tuned but am quite likely to get a 2019 Levo, mainly for the 700Wh battery (see comments about weight above plus living in the Alps where 2000m climbs are everywhere!), and that takes a 210 x 52.5mm shock so any purchase for my 2018 Carbon Expert (190 x 51mm) won't fit. So perhaps I'll just tough it out but get a shock for the new purchase and, as an extra, I won't need to fork out on a yoke as the 2019 bike comes with that fitment as standard, even if I've never heard of a 210 x 52.5 shock absorber! Though I expect the TF Tuned guys will be able to help. I asked but they've not started looking at 2019 Levos yet...
Hope the comments are useful, regards, Mark
