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5/31/2021
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Trying to see if there’s a method in my madness:
I’ve gained some weight this year (~7kg), but I’ve kept the same spring on my rear shock. Coincidentally, I’ve had a lot of crashes recently caused by lack of front wheel grip. I’ve tried different front tyres but no improvement…
Im wondering if the (relative to before) softer spring is causing me to sit back into the bike more, taking weight off the front.
Anyone had a similar experience? Interested to know what else people have done to improve their front wheel grip.
This is exactly what happens.When the shock is sitting too deep the front gets unloaded and you can't maintain enough weight on the front tire contact patch to engage corners properly. You can fake it a bit with body position but in the end you will always be fighting the shock. A ballpark estimate is for every 9kg of body weight I would be increasing 50lb/in of spring rate on coils.
The other major component of rear end support (and therefor overall grip and balance) is shock damping. Plenty of bikes are shipping with very light rear shock tunes that don't work well for riders outside of a narrow body morphology range. If you are over 100kg you might have much better luck with a slightly firmer base compression tune.
Losing the front becomes a self fulfiling prophesy. You wash the front, so lose confidence, so start hanging off the back, so lose grip......so wash the front.
Yeah for sure. Get a stiffer spring and test. I’m very sensitive to spring rate and have been trying lots of weights and materials. Steel, Ti, lightweight steel. They all make a difference
Cheers for the advice - definitely seems to make sense. Gonna try the air shock again so I can play around with pressures, but definitely going to have to get another spring
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