Rockshox Suspension Tuning Talk/Questions

Hey all,

I'm looking to experiment with the suspension on my 2023 GT Force Carbon Pro this season and I thought I'd see if anyone else has similar questions/thoughts as me. Currently, it has MY23 Zeb Ult/Super Deluxe Ult on it which are setup as follows:

Zeb 170-

64 PSI/2 tokens/RB 1 from open/LSC 7 from closed/HSC 4 from closed

SDU 230x65 linear air can/no HBO

181 PSI(%25 sag)/2 positive tokens/0 negative tokens/RB 5 from closed/LSC 3 from closed/HSC 4 from closed

As you can see, my philosophy is to run a fairly stiff spring rate with a faster rebound and use tokens to tune bottom-out resistance as opposed to using compression damping to hold the suspension up. I Like my suspension to be stiff and efficient but not overly damped in order to maintain speed and sensitivity.

I'm a fairly fast and aggressive rider and at 5'8", 165 lb w gear, I'm not normally pushing the limits of the damping adjustments. That being said, I have found that I'm running almost completely open RB (1 from open) on the fork. I have seen that others have had similar issues and obviously RS has released the 3.1 upgrade kit to expand the range of tuning. I would go ahead and buy that, but I'm thinking I might be able to lower the damping force by swapping out the RS/Maxima 7WT for 5/6 WT. If anyone else has done this, I'd love to hear about the results.

Before I bought the Force, my main bike was a Knolly Chilcotin 167 with a 170 Lyrik Ult Charger 2.1/SDU Ult w Megneg. I took all the bands out of the negative chamber to maximize the midstroke support which meant I could run minimal LSC damping. In short, I was able to keep the damping open while keeping supportive suspension under pumping. I like the newest gen SDU Ult on the Force but it lives noticeably deeper in the stroke than the old one with the megneg, even with less sag. I'm almost completely sure this is due to the "linear" air can. I was looking for the "progressive" aircan option over the last few months but it proved difficult. Now that RS has released the new "Linear XL" aircan, I'm hoping this may be the solution. To me, it looks like it has the expanded negative chamber of the original "progressive" aircan with a massive positive chamber. To get the same effect as the Megneg/progressive aircan's, do I stack the Linear XL's positive chamber with tokens or do I leave it empty? Has anyone else felt the difference between the linear and progressive cans?