The Tuesday Tune Ep 4 - Springs vs Dampers - Video

 +1 This is a really awesome way to raise the bar for technical understanding in the community & brand awareness at the same time. Tip my hat!

 +1 loving this series; it's helping me more clearly understand tuning my suspension, and since I'm fortunate to have a Float 36 RC2 on the front and DB Air on the back there are plenty of adjustments to mess with!

 Nice, very useful...after 5 years in MTB now I start to learn...and after a few crashes also

 Let us know if anything isn't clear, we're always after feedback on how these vids could be improved

 @VorsprungSuspension: Some whiteboard drawings could always help

 @Archimonde: noted, will get on that!

 Spring controls rider, damping controls spring. It's a general saying, but is a great way to understand the difference between the two.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Adding some graphs showing the spring rate and how compression damper and rebound effect it would be very helpful. BTW thanks for the video.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Appreciated the bit about dampers converting energy to heat. That added a piece to the mental puzzle of suspension. And you helped me get a better idea of how to use my low speed compression adjust. Thanks Steve!

 I hope you're aware of proper bomb disposal techniques... don't cut the orange wire...

 @medievalbiking: You do realize that out of the tens of thousands of units sold, less than 1% have exploded and Fox is doing a self-issued recall? If your talking about an unrecognized bomb look at Cane Creek.

 @siderealwall2: it's a joke... we are happy we have something to joke about. It is pretty irrelevant who made the recall - We'd be joking about it. Nobody makes a jokes and then says: off course other dampers explode too.

 Damper. Dampener gets you a little moist.

 @WAKIdesigns don't be so rude to him, he clearly lost his sense of humour in the great float x2 fire of '67

 HSC will have an effect everywhere in the stroke, including the roots that you're hitting in the early stroke - you can increase the HSC until it starts to feel harsh on that sort of thing. Spring progression really affects the last third of the stroke substantially and the rest not so much, so you can do what you like with that and not have it affect the first part of the stroke so much.

 @VorsprungSuspension: So on rought terrain with a mix of square edged impacts and drops/jumps it would be preferable to run light HSC but to use the volume spacers to control bottom out ? Can you point out a few examples where it would be preferable to use more HSC and a more linear spring and vice versa?

 @Gilo: You always want some amount of HSC damping because otherwise there is no LSC damping either. Exactly how much you need varies, but bigger hits where keeping control is an issue (not drops or jumps with smooth landings, think more like the huge holes in typical WC tracks), especially if the terrain is steep, require substantial HSC as well. If for example you were riding something particularly steep and rough where the max speeds aren't so high, running more HSC with a firmer/more linear spring rate can be beneficial, otherwise you find yourself too riding far into the travel without enough support in the early stroke.

 That would be very cool if you could select your fork maybe? And put in a few things and it spits out tuning options that would be nice.

 That would be cool and I have contemplated something along those lines but right now it's not on the cards.

 you love it

 Basically, if it's oily, call Steve. If it's on fire, call Rob.

 @VorsprungSuspension: and if it's not on fire, just go direct to Steve.

 How the fork gets to a certain position in its travel is largely irrelevant - how far the spring is compressed dictates the amount of stored energy and the amount of force it is able to deliver. In that respect, the highest rebound speeds will always occur deep in the travel, which is why Rockshox marketed their HSR/LSR adjusters as "beginning stroke" and "ending stroke" even though that wasn't strictly correct.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Lol, I was always concerned that i had it the wrong way round when adjusting the rebound on my r2c2. If theyd just called them high and low speed it woulda made a lot more sense. Now I've got a charger and I only get one dial at each end.

What confuses me now is that if you look at the suggested tunes in the charger (boxxer) manual, the med and firm compression stacks are very similar. The only differences being that the med tune has a thicker shim near the piston face than the firm, then at the other end of the stack there are a few thicker shims on either tune. the med tune looks like it would be stiffer than the firm tune to my untrained eye. could you shed any light on this?

 @VorsprungSuspension: Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

 @gabriel-mission9: It's all to do with the single thick shim at the back of the Firm stack (18x0.20) which replaces the 18x0.15 in the Med stack and gives it a lot more preload. Shim thickness affects stiffness a lot - the 0.2 shims are about 2.4 times stiffer than the 0.15s. Anything behind the 8mm spacer shims (above them on the page) is not an active part of the shim stack. The stacks shown in the manual are kind of all over the place though, there are no face shims shown in compression (ring shims should not act directly on the piston) and the shape of the rebound curve (rather than just the scale) varies from one tune to another.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Ok. What confused me was the med tunes thicker 16x1.5 shim, second in from the piston, compared to the 16x1 in the firm tune. I now realise it sits inside the 18x3 ring shim, so doesnt really function like a normal shim. Makes more sense now, thanks.

 @gabriel-mission9: Ah yeah ok - that actually increases the preload on the stack, because there is a bigger difference between the guide shim thickness and the ring shim thickness.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Yeah, all makes sense now. As soon as I realised the guide shim sits inside the ring shim, I worked out that the thicker the guide shim is the less the shims above will bend into the ring shim, reducing the preload. I have not actually opened up the charger damper and looked at the shims in the flesh, so still kinda feeling around in the dark a bit.

These video's you make are awesome. Even some of the more basic stuff you talk about changed the way I look at things I thought I understood well. The more complicated bits you get into are a godsend, as no-one else on the internet seems to dare go into so much detaill, or think that anyone would be interested. So yeah, thank you for taking the time to make them, and please keep it up.

 www.pinkbike.com/u/VorsprungSuspension/blog/nerd-alert-inside-the-foxtrekpenske-reaktiv-drcv-shock.html

Basically your synopsis is correct, though it differs from most setups in that the HSC is not really tied to the LSC threshold in any way, and so you can run a firmer platform for climbing without necessarily requiring a lot of high speed damping. For descending or while in the open mode it is no different to a conventional damper.

 Use a rubber strap to grip the canister?

 @bstill30: this. Channel locks and an old tube will also do the trick so long as you're mechanically inclined and not ham fisting everything.

 Yeah, the tool is called a strap wrench.

 Have you seen the size of steves thumbs?

 Rubber strap wrench is what you need! Most of them suck, but had good luck with the Blue Point (Snap-on's cheaper subsidiary brand) ones. Whatever you get, make sure it has a soft rubber strap not some crappy plastic thing that has about as much grip as a Hookworm on wet grass.

 As a first step, you can try using an old tube as a strap wrench.

 Or you can just use some inner tube to grip if its not crazy tight...

 I have tried all of these its on stupidly tight all air has been dumped etc and my hands really hurt lol

 A pliable leather belt may also do the trick. As in, a belt that is used to hold trousers up.

 Pinkbike already has a mammoth amount of suspension testing and reviews posted by their staff, so it's unlikely we will go that route any time soon, however as far as technical comparisons, we'll probably slot a few in there

 Yep - if you're hitting legit 40 foot drops you're going to want monumentally stiff spring and damping rates.

 We'll cover the specifics of sag in an upcoming video, and this question will be addressed in some detail. However no, the LSC setting should not really be anything to do with preload.

 @VorsprungSuspension: Perfect, and thanks for the reply!

 Sorry for the Typo fest above. Sheeesh

 @VorsprungSuspension

 You're on the right track with that for sure. Using the damper either in compression or rebound, to dissipate energy in the back prevents it from kicking.

 @VorsprungSuspension: sweet thank you. Great videos. Always learn something that improves my bike

 For sure - you can make setup/geometric changes to the bike that alter your requirements from the suspension. Raising bar height means you don't need to rely so much on spring rate or compression damping to keep the bars up where you need them, for example.

 Noted, thanks!

 Most rebound adjusters are considered low speed adjusters unless specified otherwise, however most dampers are usually configured in such a way that the rebound adjuster has a noticeable effect at all rebound speeds.

 Take an English class?

 Incite political unrest?

 They have been in the past (like 15 years ago), but realistically they complicated setup more than they assisted it.

 Haven't had the chance to try one yet, but it's a cool idea for relatively affordable consumer level tuning for sure, although there are a couple of limitations in that you can't actually directly infer position from air pressure alone, and it runs at a low sample rate. I think it's sufficient to help a lot of people improve their setup though, which is the aim of the game - it isn't trying to be F1 level data logging, it's trying to help people get the most out of their setup for the least amount of messing around, and I think that is very achievable.