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8/2/2018
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Jackson, WY
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Last fall I was riding in Moab and found on the high speed sections of Porcupine rim, where there are endless square-edge rocks to plow through, that me and my bike were not rolling quite as fast as others I was riding with. I wasn’t really braking and I was pumping as best I could through the chunk, but still felt like I was just losing speed and the rear wheel was getting hung up. Is there a general suspension setup that tends to carry speed better in this scenario or should I just stop being Jerry and go faster?
I ride the latest Giant Reign with a RS Super Deluxe Coil and Fox Performance Elite 38 setup Mullet. I tend to run my suspension stiffer, with more compression damping and faster rebound. Thanks for the input!
It's hard to give general advice for these things, would we be able to get your weight and current settings? Things like "stiffer" are relative so it could be possible that the base tune is too soft even if you have the dials wound in, for example.
One thing I notice with the giants is they do need less sag at the shock than some bikes, have you tried a stiffer spring? A soft set up can hang up the back wheel too, so going up a rate helps it to not bog down between bumps and skip over them instead. And have you got decent tyres with beefy casings at the appropriate pressure?
I’m about 210 lbs, got a 500 lbs spring, LSC 4 from closed, HSC 1 from closed, rebound 9 from closed, HBO 2 from closed, 2 turns of preload. Conti DH casing usually at 27 rear 23 front.
I think the Ai bots have been trained on too many forum posts and are getting even more unhinged!
As for advice, I would start with bracketing some settings - try the LSC 2 more clicks firmer then rebound 2 clicks each way. Then I would be trying a different spring - see if you can test a 550, as spring rate is always the most crucial part of set up so unfortunately with coils it does mean testing at least a couple if it doesn't feel good straight away.
Trying springs is actually the first thing I would try, but turning knobs is free so may as well try some of that first but if it doesn't get anywhere its more likely a spring thing. Also the HBO and HSC don't make a massive difference (especially if the spring isn't ideal) so don't waste too much time on those until you make progress with the other variables
I don't know if this will apply to your situation, but I found the HSC knob on my new '23 Super Deluxe to add a lot of harshness on high speed chatter and rocks without adding a lot of upside. I live in a desert with rocks and a lot of high speed chatter, not unlike your ride at Moab. The low speed knob and HBO were friendly but my HSC is either wide open or 1 click from open. YMMV
Sesame guy is being more than unhelpful, but he's not completely wrong. It is hard to recommend anything without seeing a video of you on the bike on this trail, because it's impossible to know any other way if you're doing something really really wrong on the bike. From the way you're talking about bike setup and riding, it sounds like you know what you're talking about but, again, no way to know. One of the universal experiences of downhill mountain biking is riding with someone who looks like they're doing the exact same thing as you, but they're pulling away and dropping you despite you doing everything you possibly can to keep up. It's demoralizing, and most of the time it's not about bike setup.
Really rough trails IME works better with lighter spring rate, faster rebound, and enough HSC for the big impacts you don't anticipate. Don't be afraid to go a spring rate down, and play with the spring preload. i.e. run a lighter spring and preload it more. $.02
Short of that, maybe try reducing your compression and or, add rebound just for the DH portions of your ride and see if that helps.
Appreciate the feedback. Seeing as it’s winter in Wyoming right now, won’t be riding for a bit, but this gives me some avenues to try come spring time!
So one thing that may or may not have any bering is if the rebound is actually a little too fast. I feel like (and seen in Motion Instruments data) that when the rebound gets too fast (LSR in particular) it has this effect of "Pushing" the wheels into the holes of the trail. That's why something like ultra-fast rebound can feel good on a smoother trail, but start to feel a bit like crap when the trail gets rougher. I have seen from my experience that when you speed rebound up it goes from feeling great to feeling harsh in the span of a click or two.
I know Jordi from fox in some interview he had recommended the Race Tech Motorcycle Suspension Bible, and I usually start off my season by thumbing through the book to help get my head in the game. Might be worth a read.
Yup, I’ve got slowmo video of wheels bouncing off the ground from rebound that’s too fast, it’s good for small bumps but after a certain point it needs a bit of control.
the suspension bible is my go to recommendation for people!
So, if that is the case where you want your rebound to be as fast as possible to avoid packing, but not so fast that it starts bouncing off the ground, how would you go about adjusting a shock with HSR/LSR adjustments? Would you recommend people run faster HSR compared to LSR? Does it matter? Are HSR adjustments silly?
And to expand on that in terms of spring rate, do you buy into some of the "higher sag, faster rebound" setups that some telemetry systems are advocating for?
It seems to me, from just my own personal experience, that you can either run a stiffer setup with slower rebound, or a softer setup with faster rebound. However, you run into problems when you try to run stiff and fast (or soft and slow).
So I few observations-
"packing" is just as much a low speed rebound thing as high speed. Maybe more as the bike just naturally ratchets itself down and sits at a deeper, stiffer part of the stroke. Not just in repeated big bumps.
It can also be just as much a case of the spring or compression damping being too soft. You maybe don't need the wheel to "recover" so much as not end up so deep in the first place.
HSR adjustments are Ok in theory - they don't always work quite right in practise but it does make sense for handling a wide range of spring rates. I tend towards slower HSR settings and use the LSR for fine tuning but the end result will be something resembling linear all going to plan. This makes it a little easier to manage set up wise
I don't particularly aim for lots of sag and fast rebound, I haven't found that to work particularly well based on feedback from riders and my own testing. One thing to remember is the feeling of rebound speed is just the return energy of the spring so and undersprung bike will always feel "slow" even if the damper is fully open and vice versa. The spring rate drives the rest of the set up so thats always the main thing that will determine the feel and the riders preference and then the damping just needs to be tuned to do its job with the chosen spring
Hopefully that makes sense, it’s Friday night and it’s been crazy with Crankworx about to kick off
Personally, I've always been a 10% sag in the front 25% in the rear, but I've move to close to 20% in the front and 30% in the rear, and make up some of the difference in ride hight by speeding up LSR.
It's interesting to hear your take on sag and rebound since I feel like I'm seeing a lot more of suspension charts like the following for ibis. Which is WAY off from the fox chart (and more in line with what I've seen people move to using suspension analytics).
For reference, a certain editor from a certain pink toned bike website ended up using BYB telemetry to end up with the following setup for his 80kg weight:
76 psi, 2 volume spacers, 16/16 LSR, 8/8HSR, 10/16LSC, 0/8 HSC
Which is fairly close to the Ibis recommendations (Yeti's calculator is pretty close to that as well).
The reason I ask this, mainly, is to see how I can get friends/family/customers more in the ballpark for what their setup should be before they head out the door. Unfortunately people have an allergic reaction to adjusting their suspension when it rolls out of a bike shop, and I see plenty of people who's suspension just doesn't work at all for them.
The certain editors settings look a lot like the "before" settings of clients I get on my set up days but complain of sore hands and wallowing/diving. After a few runs (assuming a 170mm fork) They end up a lot closer to the recommended Fox settings and feeling better all round. eg 80kg rider + 170mm fork would probably be around 90psi, 0 spacers, lsc-10, hsc-5 lsr-7/9, hsr-4/5 as a rough ballpark off the top of my head. More aggressive riders will have more spacers (could be 2-3) and/or a couple extra psi. If you're over 60kg and need to run you rebound full open you have gone waayyyyy off base somewhere!
I don't want to disparage some of the data systems and people too much but there seem to be a lot of people running DAQ but don't own a dyno so don't have that reference point of where a dampers range actually is.
Probably 2/3rds of the people on those days have been 38 riders and all had very similar set ups, and at least one was an IBIS that ended up very different to their factory settings again!
Another thing to note, is just because the wheel compresses all the way up a bump and then back down in to a hole, "using all the travel" doesn't mean there is enough consistent load on the wheel to have much grip so it probably isn't gaining you anything.
This is great info, because you've answered my next question which was "where do you usually find people after you've worked with them"
If I ever find myself in NZ I owe you a beer!
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