I've been riding my bike with stock setting since April and have a pretty good feel for sag and damping setting.
While I've no issue with the rear shock at all - which merrily works, fully open, up or downhill, all.day.long - with the Pikes on the other hand, I'm struggling to find a sweet spot.
I'm looking for a bit more support when riding a bit more aggressively, so figure a tweak to the air volume could be the ticket. I've bought some grey bottomless tokens and plan to try out adding a third for a Surrey Hills ride tomorrow morning.
Has anyone else had a play with tokens and can comment on corrected air pressure and tweaks to damping?
For reference I'm 78kgs in full kit and have been using about 70-75psi
im 72kg (160lbs) and i run 75 psi with 2 tokens in a 160mm pike. gives good mid support but i find it bottoms easy on the really big drops. 15-25ft. im tempted to add another token or 2 and drop the pressure a bit more.
I've been riding my bike with stock setting since April and have a pretty good feel for sag and damping setting.
While I've no issue with the rear shock at all - which merrily works, fully open, up or downhill, all.day.long - with the Pikes on the other hand, I'm struggling to find a sweet spot.
I'm looking for a bit more support when riding a bit more aggressively, so figure a tweak to the air volume could be the ticket. I've bought some grey bottomless tokens and plan to try out adding a third for a Surrey Hills ride tomorrow morning.
Has anyone else had a play with tokens and can comment on corrected air pressure and tweaks to damping?
For reference I'm 78kgs in full kit and have been using about 70-75psi
Cheers
Hey, I've got the same model t130, took me a while to get the setup right with both the fork and rear shock. I was bottoming out badly on big drops initially so upped to 5 tokens but eventually settled on 4, also stuck two bands in the rear shock too. It's been running that setup since May and had no need to alter it since as it runs great. Did you get yours sorted?
I've been riding my bike with stock setting since April and have a pretty good feel for sag and damping setting.
While I've no issue with the rear shock at all - which merrily works, fully open, up or downhill, all.day.long - with the Pikes on the other hand, I'm struggling to find a sweet spot.
I'm looking for a bit more support when riding a bit more aggressively, so figure a tweak to the air volume could be the ticket. I've bought some grey bottomless tokens and plan to try out adding a third for a Surrey Hills ride tomorrow morning.
Has anyone else had a play with tokens and can comment on corrected air pressure and tweaks to damping?
For reference I'm 78kgs in full kit and have been using about 70-75psi
Cheers
Hey, I've got the same model t130, took me a while to get the setup right with both the fork and rear shock. I was bottoming out badly on big drops initially so upped to 5 tokens but eventually settled on 4, also stuck two bands in the rear shock too. It's been running that setup since May and had no need to alter it since as it runs great. Did you get yours sorted?
I thinks so. I found that two grey tokens and 68-70 psi and a few click of compression damping improved the support and stopped me bottoming out on heavy drops.
But, to complicate matters I'm about to fit a 140mm air shaft to slacken the head angle and raise the BB a touch.
I'll be back to square 1 with the pressures and tokens!
Buying a digital pressure gauge and taking it out on rides with a shock pump seems to be the ticket.
Glad that the rear doesn't need much tweaking at all - just get out and ride it.
Fitting the 140mm airshaft was pretty simple (circlips aside!) and was a good excuse to do a lower leg service and get plenty of lovely SRAM grease in there.
Been on a couple of rides now to try and get the air pressure dialled (a few PSI lower with one less token) and I'm pretty pleased. It's boggy out on the Surrey Hills trails at the moment, so not an ideal time to be comparing suspension to my summer benchmarks - but so far, so good!
For the sake of £25 for a new shaft, it's a good excuse to strip the forks apart and have a tinker. To be honest having nicely oiled foam rings and lots if grease in there probably makes more difference to feel than the extra travel!
Fitting the 140mm airshaft was pretty simple (circlips aside!) and was a good excuse to do a lower leg service and get plenty of lovely SRAM grease in there.
Been on a couple of rides now to try and get the air pressure dialled (a few PSI lower with one less token) and I'm pretty pleased. It's boggy out on the Surrey Hills trails at the moment, so not an ideal time to be comparing suspension to my summer benchmarks - but so far, so good!
For the sake of £25 for a new shaft, it's a good excuse to strip the forks apart and have a tinker. To be honest having nicely oiled foam rings and lots if grease in there probably makes more difference to feel than the extra travel!
If you can find a supplier, I say do it.
Thanks for the feedback. I think I'll get hold of a shaft and give it a go, as you say its not too much of a job and an excuse to give the fork a once over, the additional BB height will be helpful as well.
Out of curiosity I borrowed a pair of Quarq Shock Wiz sensors from Liam @ Surreyhills suspension on the weekend and enjoyed a great morning on the trails in Mickleham/Box Hill.
It's a fairly user-friendly system and once rigged up the bike you just ride and then respond to the tuning advice offered in real time via the app.
The object is ride across a broad spectrum of trails conditions to give enough data for for the system to provide a confidence level on various tweaks to damping and pressure. After each change you start a 'new session' and then monitor how the shocks are responding in terms of packing, bob, bottoming etc.
My base settings weren't a million miles off, but with a bit more pressure, some more rebound and a token in the Pikes the system claimed to be 100% confident in an optimised setup!
Similarly, the Monarch Debonair also need a touch more air and will need a bit of internal work come the next service to add a volume band.
While £400 to buy just one sensor is bloody steep, if you can rent one (or even better two in my case!) it's an enjoyable way of field-testing your own intuition and feel for your suspension settings.
The bike did feel nicely balanced and i appreciate the confidence it provides offering a base platform to work with come a trip to new trails or a change to a new season of weather.
Check out Liam's 'Surreyhills Suspension' Facebook page for more details and give him a shout
So for those of us that will probably never get a shot at the Quarq Shock Wiz, could you post what set up you ended up with? Volume spacers, pressures and your riding weight? Thanks
So for those of us that will probably never get a shot at the Quarq Shock Wiz, could you post what set up you ended up with? Volume spacers, pressures and your riding weight? Thanks
No problem. I'm 75kg full kitted and while a trail rider, I like to jump the bike and do fairly large drops (up to 6ft).
PIKE
- 140mm air shaft. - 75psi - x2 volume spacers - Low speed compression full open. Its not an RCT3, so I don't have hi-speed damping controls. - The shockwiz advised i use a surprising amount of rebound damping - about 6 clicks - Dynamic 27% sag
Monarch
- 184 psi - no volume bands, but 1 or 2 were suggested by the app - 6 clicks of rebound - run fully open - Dynamic 27% sag
Thank you very much. I'm going to try to adjust the numbers for my weight, ride a loop at my current set up, change and see how it feels. Amazing technology that is coming out now. Might as well take advantage of it.
So I did an adjustment to my tune using information from ptpt. Yes, I could feel the difference and yes it was better. With difference in body weight and my public school math running the conversion numbers I know I'm off a little but it was well worth the time. I'm still on a 130mm fork so added one spacer for a total of three. I was able to drop the compression all the way down to two clicks. Tracked small stuff really well and I never bottomed (didn't hit anything super big just some smaller, 3-4' drops and doubles. Going to play with minor adjustments once the local jump park dries up a bit to try and fine tune it even further. Thanks again for the info ptpt. If anyone has a chance to play with a Shock Wiz I believe it is time well spent.