Pinkbike Poll: How Many Suspension Adjustments Do You Actually Need?
Push's ElevenSix shock is custom-tuned to each customer, and also features an external pedaling switch, and high- and low-speed circuits for both compression and rebound damping.
Do you use and understand all of your suspension dials? Are you riding with all of the dials in the middle? What level of adjustment do you truly need? Do you feel that your bike maker's pre-selected tune is good enough to deliver the suspension performance you want? Fair questions all, because most factory suspension tuners - the people who work on a hundred or so bikes each day at an event like Crankworx, will tell you that most riders they come across could achieve a better ride using the factory default settings. I occasionally go online to check my preferred setups against the factory recommended tunes (most brands make them available if you are willing to search long enough) and about fifty percent of the time, my tunes match theirs. I am right and wrong - but which fifty percent?
RockShox "Bottomless Tokens" are plastic spacers that thread into the fork's top cap, and to each other, to reduce the volume of the air-spring chamber. Thick plastic bands are used for the same purpose inside the air-cans of popular shocks. The topic dominates suspension forums.
Top brands work closely with their suspension suppliers to arrive at a base tune for each of their models that matches the style and amplitude that best represents how the bike will be ridden. They use sponsored riders to provide the high range and their demo fleets to provide an average baseline, then tune for the middle ground - which should be pretty darn close to every rider's optimum settings. Considering that, most bikes should ride well as-delivered, providing that the customer knows how to arrive at the proper spring sag and low-speed rebound values - so their fork and shock should not need a separate adjustment for every damping function.
But, we love all those dials. Human DNA is a near-perfect match to that of a chimpanzee and like them, we are notorious knob twisters. A long-time motocross tuner told me once that his suspension had 32 clicks of high and low-speed rebound and a threaded collar with two inches of preload available at the spring - but only one of those adjustments was the correct one. So, give your tuning skills a fair assessment and answer the following question:
How Many Suspension Adjustments do You Actually Need?
Choose all that apply
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Don't freak out man; the riders have spoken and we like to fiddle with knobs because it makes us feel faster
I know lot of intermediate riders, they do not ride much because they turn with their knobs all day long and blame suspension for their lack of skills
High and low speed rebound, on the other hand, has me flummoxed. Since the rebound is controlled by the spring, not by hitting bumps, how is it possible to have high or low speed rebound movements?
Can anyone shed light?
So it's sort of reversed, for the suspension to recover from high speed compression you need low speed rebound, and for the suspension to recover from low speed compression you need high speed rebound.
And, obviously, when we are talking about high and low speeds we mean the speed of the shock shaft and not the speed the bike is travelling. The high speed compressions are caused by a really fast whack from a rock or root that only compresses the suspension a little bit. The low speed compressions are caused by the riders weight, these cause the suspension to be squashed deep into the travel but get there slowly.
Hope that makes sense and helps.
When the fork is rebounding from only a couple inches into its fork's travel, there isn't much spring force pushing the fork lowers into extension. Because there isn't much force the fork lowers rebound slowly, so it is slow speed rebound.
Put simply (and unlike the compression circuit) high speed rebound is ending stroke rebound, and slow speed rebound is beginning stroke rebound.
Enjoy the DVO!
To fine tune your shock and get better performances, you really need knowledges that most riders don't have. The ones who think they know often are the ones who know less. You also need to be able to notice correctly the slight differences when you turn the knobs. Which is far from easy.
Also, plenty of factors that will vary over time will affect the ideal settings. Like weather, trail type, trail condition, tire pressure, tire wear, temperature. If you ride more intense, the shock will heat up, affecting oil viscosity and so the dampening.
I agree with your first sentence. A strong majority of people just want to get out there and ride their bikes.
I ride with people who drop their lowers and oil change a few times a riding season plus damper servicing; and people that have had a bike two plus years and never had their suspension opened up. Doesn't seem to be any middle ground, just those two extremes.
I'll take an RC2 fork over any type of climbing switch fork. I've been burnt by ill preforming Lyrics, 36s and 34s with travel adjust or lockout doohickeys in the past. Not saying I have any idea what I'm doing with those dials, but one can pretend...
"Preload isn't necessary on air forks..."
That's what he's saying...
Preload compresses a coil spring, because a coil spring compresses 1 inch per unit of rated weight. So, a coil spring will compress 1" for every 500lbs applied to it if it's a 500lb spring. By precompressing the spring, or preloading it, you are applying "weight" to the spring in order to cause it to sit higher in its travel than it otherwise would in order to accomodate the load of the rider. A negative spring does two things... first, it counteracts the significantly higher degree of stiction caused by the heavier seals necessary to contain the air spring which are not present on a coil spring. Second, it counters the force of the air spring at full extension... since a coil spring has a finite length at rest it naturally reduces the rate at which it releases energy as it expands to it's full length but an air spring is under pressure even at full extension, so they used to require a ton of rebound to control them... which combined with the stiction to make them feel generally like shit. The negative air spring reduces the amount of energy needed to break stiction and initiate travel and controls the spring as it reaches full expansion. It has literally nothing to do with setting sag and is in no way, shape, or form similar to preload.
Negative spring adjustment may not work the same way that preload does with a coil, but the end result of the adjustment is analogous. Adjusting the negative spring rate on an air shock will change the ride height/sag independently of spring rate, just like adjusting preload on a coil does.
You can see for yourself on a fork with an adjustable negative spring like a DVO or RS Dual Air. The sag will change as the negative spring is adjusted, even though positive spring rate remains exactly the same. Just like how coil preload adjusts sag without changing the spring, the negative spring changes sag without changing the psi of the positive air spring.
Both adjustments alter the suspension in the same way by shifting the compression curve up or down without changing the slope of the curve. That's why negative springs "reduce stiction" in air forks. The negative spring shifts the compression curve down to a lower point where it takes less force to initiate movement, which is the same effect that reducing preload on a coil fork has.
A less verbose way to describe it:
Your spring curve is y=mx+b (actual air spring curve would be more complicated).
psi/spring rate both change m.
negative spring and preload both change b.
You're wrong and know shit about suspension. Now shut the f*ck up please.
Well, if you don't believe me, I'll link the explanation from RockShox.
This spring curve chart shows that negative spring causes the compression curve to move up or down (b) while the spring rate/slope (m) remains static:
imgur.com/a/5JhIA
I pulled this chart directly from Rockshox's suspension doc, which further explains it:
www.sram.com.cn/sites/default/files/techdocs/rockshox_suspension_theory_10-replica.pdf
Here's a similar chart from the same doc showing that preload has the same effect on coils:
imgur.com/a/M2CqG
So are you going to tell Rockshox to shut the f*ck up too?
While the 2 adjustments aren't completely analogous, both can be used to adjust sag independently of spring rate, as shown in those 2 graphs. A fact that is quite obvious if you've ever actually adjusted a negative spring.
Honestly, it's impressive how wrong you are and that you're stupid enough to keep trying.
The Rockshox charts clearly show that adjusting negative spring and adjusting preload have a similar effect.
On both charts you can see that the lines follow the same slope but move up or down on the Y axis depending on the negative spring or preload adjust. Sag changes when the value of Y at the intersection of X=0 changes, so moving the line up or down via preload or negative spring both change sag without effecting the spring rate/slope.
If you don't understand how that works, well, I don't have time to explain 7th grade geometry for you.
How do you explain sag changing when you adjust the negative spring, something that very clearly happens IRL?
Yes, the Y axis at X=0 is break away force... On both charts. Negative spring and preload both change break away force, which changes sag, without changing the spring rate/slope. What do you think preload changes? It changes break away force just like the chart shows, and juat like negative spring does.
Ok, I'm going to stop feeding the trolls now...
Copy and pasted directly from Sram's technical documentation:
"
A coil spring at rest is not under pressure and creates no
breakaway force. Preloading a coil spring compresses the
spring without initiating stroke. This results in a breakaway
force and stiffer spring feel.
"
and
"
A negative spring can be used to help the
compression forces overcome the breakaway force at the
beginning of the stroke. Any amount of force created by the
negative spring reduces the amount of of breakaway force
by the same amount.
"
Both adjustments are used to alter breakaway force of the suspension (shift the curve up or down on the Y axis). Further, breakaway force is fundamental to setting sag. The only 2 properties of the spring that can effect sag are breakaway force and spring rate.
A 10lb linear spring will sag 1" when 10lb of force is applied. The same spring with 5lbs of breakaway will only sag 1/2", which is why changing preload or negative spring alters sag. The RS compression curve charts show this.
If you think "breakaway force has no bearing on sag" and "preload has no bearing on breakaway force", then how does adjusting preload change sag? What property is being altered if it's not breakaway force?
You literally just dug up shit I already explained from the manual to illustrate how you don't understand what it means. Just sit the f*ck up already...
> 5lbs of breakaway force means that 10lbs still compresses it 1"... it just means that 4.9lbs doesn't compress it at all
When 10 lbs of force are applied to the preloaded spring the first 5 lbs don't compress the spring at all (because that's the breakaway force), now you have 5 lbs of force left, which compresses the spring at 10 lbs/inch = 1/2" of compression. I'm sorry you suck so bad at elementary arithmetic.
5lbs breakaway force means it takes 5lbs to begin motion. Once that breakaway force is met, there is not a perpetual 5lb of additional force... the breakaway force has been overcome. So, at 5.1lbs of force, there is 5.1lbs of force exerted on the spring not 0.1lbs.
Seriously, just shut the f*ck up already. You're an idiot, you don't get it and you won't get it. You've proven it over and over and now you're just digging yourself deeper into the hole of your own ignorance. f*ck off already, you're wrong... either accept it and deal with reality or stay in your little fantasy. Either is fine by me but just f*ck off and stop vomiting up your ignorance.
But am I the only one who changes damping settings in cold weather (say 40 deg F) vs hot weather (say, 100 deg F)? In the mountains, these temps are even encountered on the same ride and have a huge affect on ride feel. I'd like to see more effort put into dampers and fluids that aren't so affected by temps.
@UtahBrent that's a tough one... for damping you need a high viscosity fluid, and every high viscosity fluid I can think of has pretty drastic property changes from 40-100F. Realistically I think we're stuck with changing our settings for the foreseeable future.
and i tune/service them manually and so on... i ve never seen any fork on the market better than mine
what actually all the settings do and how the suspension works, and that plays major role and improves riding and pleasure of it ....
When riding park lines, freeride drops and jumps I find a basic Van R was suitable for this purpose. Seek and destroy, and if destroy meant destroying the shock it was a much less expensive rebuild or replacement then if I had wrote off a DHX 5.0 Air.
During technical riding, racing and the pursuit of more speed, the more the merrier for the amount of adjustments.
Your average rider will be more then happy with an air spring (sag) and rebound control, but during the most technical descents every click makes a difference on the top end suspension. Leading to better control, more speed and in the end the possibility of seconds off the clock. So it's not a question of how many adjustments are needed, but a question of how many adjustments does my riding need!
I set it to full stiff for fire road climbs.
but in the end it took me a long time to actually make use of the options. mst of my mates would benefit more from a simple spring/rebound option cause so many run shox like the ccdb and are helplessly lost with the options
Forks wise I am modifying my 44 rc3ti to eliminate marzocchi's basic orifice and poppet valve damper, I've put a shim stack base valve in already and currently designing a shimmed rebound and mid valve. Essentially I'm turning the basic damper into a fully tuneable unit as per an avvy cartridge
Nope - they're about doing as little as humanly possible that might be of actually benefit, for any given financial return.
I use a few clicks of it on the front fork to combat brake dive / help keep my front end up.
Buy the way in Europe 90 % of the cars with "stick "
Step 2) Read a lot
Step 3) Ride and play with suspension adjustments until you feel what your adjusting
Step 4) Start to dial in your bike with your new knowledge and experience
Step 5) Ride more
Step 6) Keep riding
Ride more
How many you got?