oh STW hive mind,

I’m an engineering student wanting to learn about suspension. Shim-stacks; high speed low speed rebound and compression and all the rest. What books are recomended? I’m presuming motorcycle books are the place to look but there’s loads of them and don’t want to buy a dud.

any recommendations?

I’d start with the basic tool of academic research
http://www.google.com ….
With anything have a good read around but automotive academia could well be a good place to start
Some of the tuners may go into some details and the after market guys do a bit.
People like fox tend to have the how it works part on their sites too
Also things like Linkage the suspension analysis package will also explain the bike part and how the same shock won’t be right on 2 different bikes etc.