Pinkbike Poll: How Much Time Do You Spend Setting Up Your Suspension?
Mountain bike suspension is getting ever more complicated. Four-way adjustable dampers with high- and low-speed compression and rebound damping are now fairly common, and most air springs allow the end-stroke progression to be changed as well as overall spring rate. It's not hard to see why - in a previous poll most of you said you wanted all four damping adjustments plus air-volume adjustment.
Because all these adjustments have an effect on one-another, the number of possible combinations and the scope to get it wrong is mind-boggling. I personally know plenty of people - many of them good riders - who cheerfully admit they have no idea how to setup their suspension even when it comes to the basics. And it's the basics that count, so I wonder if all the knobs and dials are distracting some people from the most important step: finding the ideal spring rate?
If the rear suspension feels harsh over braking bumps, which dial do you turn?
These days, most forks and some frames come with setup recommendations based on weight.
The good news is that suspension and bike manufacturers are increasingly making an effort to provide baseline settings for their products based on rider weight - Norco's setup guide is a great example of this. This is usually a good place to start, but in my experience there's often plenty of room to improve from there.
Fine-tuning your setup takes time and patience. So I want to know how far down the rabbit hole Pinkbike readers are willing to go towards finding their ideal setup.
Regularly hitting the bump stops? Do you add a spacer or take the beating with pride?
How much effort do you put into fine tuning your spring rate/sag?
By spring rate I mean either the pressure in air suspension or the stiffness of a coil spring.
How much effort do you put into tuning volume spacers/progression?
You can substitute ramp-up chamber pressure with volume spacers if that's what you have.
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NFT?
No F’n Thanks!
I did pay for some digital albums even though I already downloaded that same albums from Pirate Bay, but that was only because I wanted to support the artists.
This seems to be similar but not actually.
How about a short explanation (for dummies)? Thanks
Then ride the descents with my lock out on
Answer: all of them and pray for the best
Choose an adjustment then be a Dick about it
Then, I promptly forget all of it and just ride all year without touching them again.
I know how I like my suspension to feel in various situations. I adjust it at the start of a ride to suit todays riding, and then I leave it for the rest of the day"
(TF have been on the money that I haven't needed to tweak it yet).
Diversity , the spice of life
I think if you know what you’re doing with setting up your suspension, you can probably get great results without one.
For the rest of us who would just be randomly twiddling dials, changing pressure and praying for an improvement, the ShockWiz is the answer to our prayers.
Well worth the money!
Maybe this got a little bit out of hand.
Of course this is not a holistic view (and not the whole truth) of the system as there are more things to consider like repeatability, power supply stability, ADC accuracy etc. but it shoud give an idea.
That said, once I get any bike to where I like it, I leave it be-from park laps to long XC days.
At 25% rear sag, still soft enough on small bumps but doesn’t blow through the travel anymore.
Girlfriend has the same frame with an X2/38, setup took two rides.
Like I said, some bikes/shocks set up easy, some are more fussy.
That doesn't mean i know loads about suspension, but i have a certain level of feel, added to the obvious sag settings, bottoming out etc, so you know roughly where you wanna be straight away.
I experiment with the Shockwiz on known trails, seeing if what i'm feeling when i change something corresponds with what the Shockwiz is seeing.
You've got to remember, bikes are good, bikes are great. But we can easily make them worse if we get it wrong.
Norco Ride Aligned
Offset 1,
Offset 2
and Fox recommended (36 and X2)...
Still dialing them in but so far the Fox recommender is nicer than Ride Aligned..
Final test is halfway between Fox and Norco, then bracket from there.
Oh, and what is a volume spacer. Some of us DVO or Manitou and play with the oil level in the air spring if needed, or alternatively adjust the irt pressure to control bottoming.
"I spend more time in forums than riding, but am constantly finding new mods to spend money on. I regularly use other forum members suspension settings if they're somewhat close to the same weight as me regardless of their subjective desires, local trail type and riding style."
I can't imagine, unless I was racing, ever bracketing settings. That just does not sound that fun. I'll take 80% accurate and just riding. I'm lazy and willing to compromise, I guess!
Meanwhile, it blows my mind that companies are selling any rear shocks with no compression adjustment, that’s the adjustment I want to mess with every 2 rides, those are the dials that actually need to be changed on a regular basis, not the rebound I settled on 2 years ago
the ones who spend a heap of time dialling in suspension usually wont send the 5 foot gap jump.
unless i take up dh bikes with 8+inch travel again that works great for me
Mine is currently out with a mate today actually.
For example not wearing that detachable bell helmet
Punters!
(data acquisition)
And a $2k suspension will perform A LOT better than a $250 suspension even with these settings.
Sad times for mtb