Travel indicator o-rings are the glossy teenage vanity magazines for mountain bikers. The amount of unnecessary frustration those things have caused...
It amazes me how people are more focused on using all of their travel vs getting the best personal quality of ride out of their suspension, especially forks. I'd rather have a quality ride over using all my travel all the time any day!🤘
Great work again Steve. It amazes me how air springs ever got going considering how bad they were until recently. I think it's interesting that the big brands (Fox and Rockshox), who can produce a self-equalising air spring with big negative volume and not too much friction, don't bother with a coil alternative. Meanwhile those with ropier air springs are all about the coil alternative. My personal take is that in the case of Rockshox 2019 Debonair springs in particular (as well as a Luftkappe equiped fork I suspect) there's precious little benefit to coil any longer. Especially when weighed against the faff of changing coils, which leads so many people to put up with the wrong rate, or worse, preload the spring.
Still currently running air in my forks, but I am running coil on the back of my bike ATM, and it's the best thing ever. But I still have them frustrations with air forks that you have just explained, and a recent increase in bar rise has remedied the problem somewhat, too. Great vid once again, I love your commitment to these videos. So many numpties on the trails who could make a few small adjustments to transform their riding by simply watching your videos
Excellent presentation. If bar height is a primary way to optimize fork dive, it is interesting to consider that there is not an analogous option for a shock that “dives” too much. But you have the same basic problem, since optimized shock performance may not give full travel or optimal sag/rear end geometry. Then you have to consider how the fork and shock work in tandem to both create a particular static and dynamic geometry and a corresponding level of traction on the front and rear. Mind bending! I can see why you are so into suspension.
Interesting as always! that discussion around bar height/fork dive, got me thinking about front/rear bias, and how one seems to affect the other, for example I found that increasing air pressure in the rear seems to make the fork a little more prone to diving (weight shifts I guess?) and the other way around, I found that using more volume spacers in the fork led me to bottom out more/stronger in the rear. Since we are told to "always" have the rear end softer and with more rebound than the front end to avoid pitching forward, how do you know when its enough? Because we run the risk of ending up with a rear end too soft/ front end too hard, wich I found affects handling (cornering and changes of direction specially) in not so steep or fast sections of trail. What practical ways could be to notice that you have a stable set up, correctly balanced front/rear?More "sag" in the rear its enough? sag+ more rebound damping in the rear? sag+ more reb+ less compression?.... Thank you for the videos! Cheers
Tie hydraulic brake pressure into fork pressure/spring rate somehow to reduce brake dive. Could work in theory but in practice it would end up hokey AF like a Scott handlebar with cables everywhere
Some motorbike companies did this in the 80s, I think both Yamaha and Honda had variants of this. One made the compression firmer under braking, the other made it softer because your hands were already loaded up more. Eventually they both gave up on it.
My all purpose trail and tour Enduro has 170-180mm of travel. And even with all the tokens and the pressure close to being harsh, I frequently manage to bottom out the thing. Still rides decent and agile up and down. I think the amount of travel one can make use of also depends on the height of the rider, and the length of the limbs.
this is revelatory. low bar heights are problematic. higher stack frames and higher rise bars are a brilliant solution. keep that forgiving fork spring rate and raise your bars. 40mm rise on one bike, 50 on the other. brilliant advice and end result for this rider.
I have come down in travel but up in wheel size and gone to coil. So I had a commencal meta, so 650b 160mm rear super deluxe and 170mm front lyrik, found that I didnt need it all. Now I'm on a stumpjumper evo 29 with 140mm ohlins coil and lyrik air 160mm, much better all around for my style of riding
With fork dive, can't that be addressed with low speed compression? I'm a big fan of longer forks and usually bump mine up 10-20mm from factory settings. This is with air forks however, coils might respond differently
It can help to a certain extent, but it doesn't eliminate it or change the final settled position under consistent braking, and too much LSC definitely hurts bump performance. It does reduce overshoot and particularly in highly dynamic situations (braking hard through rough terrain) more compression damping (particularly in the mid-high speed range) can maintain a higher dynamic ride height.
Love the series. Any chance you could do a comparison of the major suspensions designs (VPP, DW, Horst Link, Switch Infinity, etc) how they perform under similar scenarios, their out of the box progression curves etc?
Not really plausible sorry - there is a huge amount of variation within any of those platforms to the point where no meaningful comparisons can be made of the platforms themselves. Comparing specific bikes is plausible but whole suspension linkage platforms is not.
Did Karpiel and Bender ever figure this out? What did they end with travel? Some where near 12" I think but yet Bender would still get totally crushed on landings.
Steve, can you please describe dependency of rebound to spring rate during consecutive bumps? I mean with slow rebound you can feel your bike harsher, because suspension is deeper in ut´s travel, which demand more force to compress suspension than in case when you have faster rebound and you are not so deep in suspension...right?
Unpopular take - bikes finally have geometry that doesn't suck, so coil suspension is actually useful on a wider variety of frames (therefore the bike as a package has become capable enough to blur the lines between all-mountain, park, and downhill). The weight is a secondary consideration, and it's always been possible to throw money at that... people are thus willing to spend extra money on brakes/wheels/tires/cockpit to keep up with that massive range. There are some heavy bikes which still benefit from the same advancements - but something really short and steep isn't going to feel great anyway, and roadie seat tube angles are garbage with long travel bikes under dynamic sag to climb with. Get that nonsense out of the way, and high performing suspension is the next performance frontier (followed by tire performance, contact points, then kinematics and finally weight).
Definitely some truth to that too! A lot of the geometric aspect I believe can be traced back to dropper posts - funny how quickly geometry evolves when you can descend without getting kicked in the balls by your saddle all the time.
Nice what kind of rear shock would you recommend for a rider with gear of 113kg for a Vitus Sommet crs 29nr spring size trunnion 205 x 62,5. I now have a RS super deluxe select +. Dualair 2 tokens. I run the pressure about 280 psi 30% sag
since they affect pretty much only last third of travel, no. If you have well designed airspring with large negative air chamber you shouldn´t need them as they will only reduce the amount of travel available and make fork/shock feel harsh.
@@TJ-gh6cg is correct - more air pressure will help rather than adding spacers, but more air pressure means you need less progression so you'll want to remove spacers rather than add them.
Been done - Trek tried it years ago in their special 40 cartridges. Combined the weight and lack of easy adjustment of coil with the friction, poor initial spring rate and additional weight of an air cartridge. Not to say it couldn't be done well, but it hasn't really yet.
I just started watching your videos and find them to be incredibly informative. I installed the smashpot kit in my fox 36 this weekend and looking forward to testing this week. Instructions were very well written and installation was a breeze! Do you sell soft goods like the hoodies and shirts you are wearing in the videos?
Head to our website and wave your mouse around the screen. It's our newsletter during the times we don't have enough time to do the Tuesday Tune videos (ie summer).
Fascinating. I also ride a Deviate 👌. Do you have any thoughts on the Helm? I find I need to run it at a much lower pressure than any other fork I've owned in order to get it how I like it.
After upgrading my HT from XC bike with 32mm stanchions to Trial/Enduro HT with 35mm stanchions(anvil of a bike), am I right in thinking, that bigger diameter fork will ramp up more? Since bigger stanchions means bigger piston and more air volume, and looking at hydraulic brakes and air compressors, I'm fairly convinced that this is the case. However I did not realise it before buying. I think it adds quite important aspect to buying more aggressive bikes: They don't only "give" more travel and strength, but might actually ride harsher in easy terrain? It'd be awesome to hear from #Vorsprung, or maybe an episode is justified? Any thoughts from general public are welcome too off course.
The stanchion diameter doesn't affect the progressiveness. It's determined by the volumes of the positive and negative air chambers (which all change equally as you change stanchion diameter). Your new fork could of course be more progressive anyway but it's not because of the stanchion diameter. If your fork is too linear you can add volume spacers. If it's not linear enough you can remove volume spacers if there are any, or buy a vorsprung luftkappe or smashpot if your fork is compatible :) Wider stanchions mainly affect the torsional rigidity, which could feel slightly harsher but brings the benefit of your wheel actually pointing in the correct direction..
I’m probably on a bike that has more travel than I need ,set up right I only use about 80 percent of it most of the time , But I love the geo of the enduro bikes
Steve - great video! Thanks again! I have a couple of questions. So heavier riders should be on shorter travel bikes, because they are starting off farther toward the human factor limit and therefore have less range to utilize? Vice-a-versa for lighter riders? Other than geometry if suspension is set-up properly, then owning N+1 bikes doesn't provide much benefit. The so-called this is my trail bike and this is my big bike is an invalid reason to own more than 1 optimized bike. Do you have a hypothetical travel limit for most of us (you must have thought about this one). Since geometry has improved over the years particularly with shorter travel bikes, are we narrowing in on the human limit through experience. Many of us are riding short travel bikes succesfully in situations that were only deemed big territory. I don't think my skill has improved that much. I feel geometry has increased confidence and capability, but don't notice the travel as a limiting factor. A few years ago, when purchasing an 11-6 from PUSH, I spoke with Darren. I mentioned how impressed I was with the shorter travel bike and its capabilities. He said, that most bikes (regardless of travel) utilize about the same amount travel for a given trail, except for the big hits. Does your hypothesis explain why Aggy this past week was able to ride Darkfest on a trail bike with dual crown (evil insurgent) and while everyone else was on a DH bike.
There are already far more comprehensive texts out there for general suspension theory, such as John Dixon's The Shock Absorber Handbook, and Race Tech's Motorcycle Suspension Bible. They don't contain MTB-specific stuff, but they are brilliant resources on their own.
I'd much rather have burlier forks than lighter forks... I've destroyed the bushings in a yari in like 4 months and the bushings in a BOS deville 160 in 3... I weigh 65 kg...
I want my fork to always have about 5-10mm more travel than I will probably ever use because I absolutely hate having my fork bottom out. Why not? Thoughts? Btw. I ride a relatively long and slack 29er bike with 140mm rear and 150mm front on sometimes very rough trails as for example Finale. At times I get the feeling of my rear wheel hanging up on successive mid to large size hits. I never feel like my fork doesn't have enough travel, even though it is set up to basically never bottom out and doesn't really have much travel for this kind of use. Is that to be expected with any bike? Do I not have enough travel? Could it be caused by the Mondraker suspension design/axle path? I weigh 70kg/155lb, like running relatively little sag at about barely 30% rear and 10-15% front. I run fast rebound, about mid HS compression and little LS compression compared to riding buddies. I Don't seem to remember this sensation from my dh bikes a few years back but then again that is so long ago I might just not have ridden them as hard and/or had no idea about what the suspension was doing. Would love to hear your thoughts and an't say often enough how much I love this series and hope you keep it up :)
I suppose the whole "cut the o-ring off" thing was basically one way of saying "make it feel good and be happy with it whether it's using full travel or not" so your setup sounds pretty reasonable to me. The Mondrakers aren't particularly remarkable one way or another regarding axle path and leverage rate - most pedalable bikes (bar the high pivot ones) tend to feel a bit harsh and overwhelmed in really rough stuff compared to DH bikes for sure. There is realistically no replacement for displacement when it comes to running over stuff. As Seb Stott put it a while back - "Suspension travel: more is more."
I've been in that range, and accepted a compromised answer - you can give up some mid-range support (and I'm talking even after the improvement of a Luftkappe) and lean a bit more on the LSC and drop air pressure a touch then add a spacer. The near-sag performance in normal cases is the same, it's still basically impossible to use that last bit of travel (still feels good in the bank), and when I'm getting that same sensation of getting hung up on successive hits, the front is tracking a bit easier through stuff and I can retain a little bit more momentum. I kinda did the same on the back, but the band-aid there is adding a volume spacer to + and - side, and actually leaning on HSC with reduced LSC to try and keep that rear axle more active. Again, there's no free lunch and it bobs like a mofo on flat trails and pavement, but if I ignore that I'm still faster everywhere. I'm on a similar bike (slack 150/130mm 29er), but I run 25-28% sag up front with 30% out back and prefer that very non-linear fork feel... so no way this will 100% answer the questions for you, but it's an approach that overall worked for me (or at least led me to a compromise I was happier with).
Thanks for the answers guys. Seems like my feeling that a bit more travel might not be bad was probably correct. I really like the snappy yet stable feeling of the long 140/150mm bike though...always compromises..
I look at suspension like this; I set and then make the appropriate adjustments based on MY riding style. (now this changes as I progress or regress for that matter) My goal is to make the bike(s) as stable as possible while utilizing the majority of performance of the bikes design. Setup will always be a compromise, but less so for the majority of riders (Read: slow! lol) Of course that is subjective. But personally, I think that unless a rider is very fast and consistent, the flaws of any setup/performance will not be so exaggerated. In summary, it is best to get the setup as close as possible as it was designed but yet good enough for a particular rider and riding style. I also think coils are making a 'comeback' (not really a CB) because many of the makers are churning out better quality products. Other than probably Ohlins, and maybe Fox in the past, other suspension maker components have been made half-ass and heavy imo...
Setup is always a compromise, regardless of rider speed - you're exactly right that if it's not exaggerated it doesn't matter (and the one valid complaint people have about getting performance opinions from slow and light journalists). I think the quality has always been there for anybody willing to pay the price - what I'm actually excited about is the Marzocchi line - imagine solid mid-range Fox dampers on chassis that isn't dictated by weight weenies... that stuff is going to be gold for a big aggressive rider like myself. Half-assed quality is always easy to achieve, and while weight tends to be correlated with that, it's isn't 1:1 and too often well-heeled riders use that as a proxy for quality, which is why top performing components have a lot of money spent on extra machining steps that don't benefit tubby Clydes like myself... which is why my best setup is actually a reworked Yari running a Luftkappe and a Charger damper kit.
Just watched this all for the 3rd time to make sure the info was taken in well. Just noticed the 5 thimbs downs people gave. Are they mad at information? do they hate the truth? Must be Wanna Be Endurbros who insist on a 170mm travel bike at their xc trails.
Late in this one i know but. In my opinion you are missing an absolutely fundamental part. It's not the spring thats supposed to stop you from bottoming out. It's the damper, if you are bottoming out you shouldn't install a stiffer spring, you should add more compression damping or re-shim the shock. The fact that people add tokens or increase pressure in the air shocks is that it's just a simple work around that is not the beat solution. You are dealing with the absorption of energy. If you look at a significant compression event with high energy and you see how much of the energy that is absorbed by the spring and how much is absorbed by the damper you see that the spring is just a tiny tiny amount of the total energy. How stiff the damper is, is a function of compression velocity. Just plotting linear curves like here is a huge simplification that sends the wrong signals to people on how to solve bottoming out.
I would not agree with that at all. The damper's job is to prevent excessive motion and resonant vibration to keep the bike and rider stable. Compared to the spring, it does very little to reduce bottoming out (especially in current forks where it does almost nothing whatsoever); damping forces in MTB suspension are a small fraction of the peak spring forces. Hydraulic bottom out systems are a different matter as you can get a lot of force out of them without overdamping the majority of the stroke.
@@VorsprungSuspension Thank you for taking your time to reply. I have been thinking about this alot as there are so many people in the mtb world that have an oppinion on shocks but a lot of them are seem clueless. You seem to know your stuff though. I don't agree the least bit though about the damper only being there to prevent vibration. It is about stopping excessive motion, especially at higher compresion velocities. Here is how I'm thikning. It's all about energy absorbtion (force times displacement), not force. Lets assume a drop of 1m with a bike plus rider weighing 100kg. The energy that needs to be absorbed in that is about 980J (E=Mgh), or 490J if we assume a 50/50 distribution between front and rear shock. The rear shock has a 55mm stroke with a 550 spring. The spring in that case soaks up about 145J of that energy (which is then removed by the damper at rebound). The remaining 345J needs to adsorbed by the damper. Increasing the spring rate to 650 the energy absorbed by the spring is 172J. Not a hughe difference, the majority of the work i still done by the shock. Upping the spring to 650 will cause other problems with sag etc. Sure, as the velocity decreases towards the end of the shock stroke the spring becomes more dominant in soaking up the last bit of energy. But if you are dependant on spring here I belive you are underdamped to start with. The spring mostly is for setting and mainitaing sag/ride height. An air shock is different with the porgression of those. There you can playaround with pressure and tokens to prevent bottoming out. However, that'll make the ride alot harsher the more the shock is compressed. Lets say in a banked corner or in a compresssion/dip in the trail. This prevents optimum performance of the damping throughout the shock stroke. The progressive nature of an air shock is both good and bad. It'll definitely make rebound damping way more complicated. I haven't done the math but I suspect that the rebound damping on air shock is massive compared to a coil. You should know? To me it feels like the shock manufacturers are taking the negative side of air shocks and turning it around to something positive. The parallel I draw here is how we do it on the sleds if we constantly bottom out, we don't change springs if we bottom out, we add compression damping, if adding clicks isn't sufficent we re-shim. Depending och shock design the slows speed compression can have a massive effect. Of course, if the spiring is too soft so low ride height causing bottom outs it's a different story. Put a damper and a spring in the dyno and log force displacement, preferably at constant velocity. You'll see a flat line on the spring and as you increase velocity and it goes over a critical point the damper will be stiffer than the spring. The area under the curve is the energy absorbed. Please change my mind......
@@IIIkGT cyclical motion of any kind is vibration. When you say "excessive motion", that is vibration, because it returns. I'm not saying that you could not reduce travel usage with HSC, I'm saying that we usually choose not to use that avenue as the primary form of bottoming resistance with MTBs, because the rigid sprung mass is very low and the rider is far from rigid. Compared to a sled, which has about 200kg of (essentially rigid) sprung mass, a bike has about 5% as much. This brings us to three reasons why we don't recommend trying to increase HSC on modern MTB forks in order to prevent bottoming: 1. In order to get sufficient HSC that it makes any significant difference to bottoming resistance, you need to have enough that the wheel vibration mode is way overdamped - ie the wheel can't move freely enough relative to the rigid sprung mass of the bike. That causes harshness to the rider because the damping forces and input energy from bumps now have far more force with which to accelerate & vibrate the sprung mass. On a sled, there is 200kg of sprung mass to accelerate before the rider feels much. 2. Because most MTB forks now are air sprung, they have a degree of pneumatic damping - they act as a heat pump due to the difference in adiabatic vs isothermal compression. In other words, increasing the spring rate on an air sprung fork increases your effective damping rate in direct proportion. This effect is reduced quite a bit with coil forks, but there is still some significant spring & damping coming from the compression of the internal volume of the fork itself. 2. Because of points 1 and 2, all MTB fork dampers currently have VERY light HSC damping. Changing a Grip2 or Charger2/2.1/3 HSC setting from minimum to maximum, with stock valving, makes negligible difference to how much travel you use, even though it roughly doubles the compressoin damping compared to the lightest setting, because double nothing is still nothing. Because of this, we have to make practical recommendations. You can revalve a fork with way firmer HSC and it'll begin to limit the travel, but it'll also hurt your hands. With most stock forks though, the compression adjustment does not do much. They used to do a lot more - I think we have the MTBR forums to thank for the now pretty much useless range of compression adjustment. Shocks are not identical, because some of them do have significantly more effective HSC adjusters for starters, but the same principles apply. Furthermore, you can't really use particle energy absorption approximations for mountain bikes, because the rider buckles under a certain amount of force and absorbs more of the energy themselves. Otherwise people would die from jumping BMXes.
Cut your travel indicator ring - brilliant, had me laughing.
Travel indicator o-rings are the glossy teenage vanity magazines for mountain bikers. The amount of unnecessary frustration those things have caused...
@@VorsprungSuspension invisible ones, the solution must be invisible ones!
I laughed out loud at that! I felt like Steve was talking directly to me.
@@VorsprungSuspension so is it ok that I put an o-ring on my rigid fork? I think it helps me to not bottom out …
Hahahaha really made me laugh, this line was absolute gold.
This. Was. Fantastic. Thanks for putting this together Steve. 👍🏼
It amazes me how people are more focused on using all of their travel vs getting the best personal quality of ride out of their suspension, especially forks. I'd rather have a quality ride over using all my travel all the time any day!🤘
Agreed!
Great work again Steve. It amazes me how air springs ever got going considering how bad they were until recently. I think it's interesting that the big brands (Fox and Rockshox), who can produce a self-equalising air spring with big negative volume and not too much friction, don't bother with a coil alternative. Meanwhile those with ropier air springs are all about the coil alternative. My personal take is that in the case of Rockshox 2019 Debonair springs in particular (as well as a Luftkappe equiped fork I suspect) there's precious little benefit to coil any longer. Especially when weighed against the faff of changing coils, which leads so many people to put up with the wrong rate, or worse, preload the spring.
Great video. Looking forward to more in the future.
Still currently running air in my forks, but I am running coil on the back of my bike ATM, and it's the best thing ever. But I still have them frustrations with air forks that you have just explained, and a recent increase in bar rise has remedied the problem somewhat, too. Great vid once again, I love your commitment to these videos. So many numpties on the trails who could make a few small adjustments to transform their riding by simply watching your videos
This channel is a gem! How did I not find it sooner?
Finally someone sheds some light on the truth about air and coil in this air-what-else-attitude-world. Well explained!
Excellent presentation. If bar height is a primary way to optimize fork dive, it is interesting to consider that there is not an analogous option for a shock that “dives” too much. But you have the same basic problem, since optimized shock performance may not give full travel or optimal sag/rear end geometry. Then you have to consider how the fork and shock work in tandem to both create a particular static and dynamic geometry and a corresponding level of traction on the front and rear. Mind bending! I can see why you are so into suspension.
Interesting as always! that discussion around bar height/fork dive, got
me thinking about front/rear bias, and how one seems to affect the
other, for example I found that increasing air pressure in the rear
seems to make the fork a little more prone to diving (weight shifts I
guess?) and the other way around, I found that using more volume
spacers in the fork led me to bottom out more/stronger in the rear.
Since we are told to "always" have the rear end softer and with more
rebound than the front end to avoid pitching forward, how do you know
when its enough? Because we run the risk of ending up with a rear end
too soft/ front end too hard, wich I found affects handling (cornering
and changes of direction specially) in not so steep or fast sections of
trail.
What practical ways could be to notice that you have a stable set up,
correctly balanced front/rear?More "sag" in the rear its enough? sag+
more rebound damping in the rear? sag+ more reb+ less compression?....
Thank you for the videos!
Cheers
That's a great take Steve; in the final analysis, just set it up to ride great and don't worry about your travel. I like it!! : )
Cheers.
Tie hydraulic brake pressure into fork pressure/spring rate somehow to reduce brake dive. Could work in theory but in practice it would end up hokey AF like a Scott handlebar with cables everywhere
Some motorbike companies did this in the 80s, I think both Yamaha and Honda had variants of this. One made the compression firmer under braking, the other made it softer because your hands were already loaded up more. Eventually they both gave up on it.
Killer stuff Steve, keep up the good work !
Knowledge with back up, good stuff .
I generally agree but having a cm left for when things really go pear shaped feels quite reassuring..
We need a video about head angle, fork offset and trail and how they affect handling
funny you should ask :)
My next watch actually
My all purpose trail and tour Enduro has 170-180mm of travel. And even with all the tokens and the pressure close to being harsh, I frequently manage to bottom out the thing.
Still rides decent and agile up and down.
I think the amount of travel one can make use of also depends on the height of the rider, and the length of the limbs.
this is revelatory. low bar heights are problematic. higher stack frames and higher rise bars are a brilliant solution. keep that forgiving fork spring rate and raise your bars. 40mm rise on one bike, 50 on the other. brilliant advice and end result for this rider.
Springs has always been king, just marketing told everyone air caught up, when really it nevwr did, so happy to see springs back
I just cut off my travel indicator ring. Great video
I have come down in travel but up in wheel size and gone to coil. So I had a commencal meta, so 650b 160mm rear super deluxe and 170mm front lyrik, found that I didnt need it all. Now I'm on a stumpjumper evo 29 with 140mm ohlins coil and lyrik air 160mm, much better all around for my style of riding
With fork dive, can't that be addressed with low speed compression? I'm a big fan of longer forks and usually bump mine up 10-20mm from factory settings. This is with air forks however, coils might respond differently
It can help to a certain extent, but it doesn't eliminate it or change the final settled position under consistent braking, and too much LSC definitely hurts bump performance. It does reduce overshoot and particularly in highly dynamic situations (braking hard through rough terrain) more compression damping (particularly in the mid-high speed range) can maintain a higher dynamic ride height.
Love the series. Any chance you could do a comparison of the major suspensions designs (VPP, DW, Horst Link, Switch Infinity, etc) how they perform under similar scenarios, their out of the box progression curves etc?
Not really plausible sorry - there is a huge amount of variation within any of those platforms to the point where no meaningful comparisons can be made of the platforms themselves. Comparing specific bikes is plausible but whole suspension linkage platforms is not.
Great video. Is there any advantage in the linearity of a spring (instead of air) being better able to match the damping throughout the stroke?
Did Karpiel and Bender ever figure this out? What did they end with travel? Some where near 12" I think but yet Bender would still get totally crushed on landings.
Whenever I hear someone give the advice "set your suspension so it bottoms out at least once on every ride", it takes a lot for me to hold my tongue!
I prefer to set it up so that the dust ring is 10mm from the top of travel after a ride with no "oh shit!" moments.
Aw yisss, another tuesday tune!
Steve, can you please describe dependency of rebound to spring rate during consecutive bumps? I mean with slow rebound you can feel your bike harsher, because suspension is deeper in ut´s travel, which demand more force to compress suspension than in case when you have faster rebound and you are not so deep in suspension...right?
Unpopular take - bikes finally have geometry that doesn't suck, so coil suspension is actually useful on a wider variety of frames (therefore the bike as a package has become capable enough to blur the lines between all-mountain, park, and downhill). The weight is a secondary consideration, and it's always been possible to throw money at that... people are thus willing to spend extra money on brakes/wheels/tires/cockpit to keep up with that massive range. There are some heavy bikes which still benefit from the same advancements - but something really short and steep isn't going to feel great anyway, and roadie seat tube angles are garbage with long travel bikes under dynamic sag to climb with. Get that nonsense out of the way, and high performing suspension is the next performance frontier (followed by tire performance, contact points, then kinematics and finally weight).
Definitely some truth to that too! A lot of the geometric aspect I believe can be traced back to dropper posts - funny how quickly geometry evolves when you can descend without getting kicked in the balls by your saddle all the time.
@@VorsprungSuspension I was always willing ot just play with the QR lever there to help with that, but having that a lever away is really nice.
I'm just bit confused with your take ok seat tube angles, could you please elaborate?
Nice what kind of rear shock would you recommend for a rider with gear of 113kg for a Vitus Sommet crs 29nr spring size trunnion 205 x 62,5. I now have a RS super deluxe select +. Dualair 2 tokens. I run the pressure about 280 psi 30% sag
I am very sad there are no new videos. This channel is probably too high quality for youtube.
hahah calm down mate, we'll make more soon enough. Just been busy :)
@@VorsprungSuspension Now you see me happy again! Your channel is a gem :)
Great insight, as always!
Can volume spacers help a little bit with fork dive?
since they affect pretty much only last third of travel, no. If you have well designed airspring with large negative air chamber you shouldn´t need them as they will only reduce the amount of travel available and make fork/shock feel harsh.
yeah they can by taking them out of the fork and bumping up the pressure a bit instead
@@TJ-gh6cg is correct - more air pressure will help rather than adding spacers, but more air pressure means you need less progression so you'll want to remove spacers rather than add them.
Would it be possible to make a hybrid suspension coil/air mix
Been done - Trek tried it years ago in their special 40 cartridges. Combined the weight and lack of easy adjustment of coil with the friction, poor initial spring rate and additional weight of an air cartridge. Not to say it couldn't be done well, but it hasn't really yet.
I generally agree but the thought of always having about a cm left for when things go really pear shaped is quite reassuring..
I just started watching your videos and find them to be incredibly informative. I installed the smashpot kit in my fox 36 this weekend and looking forward to testing this week. Instructions were very well written and installation was a breeze! Do you sell soft goods like the hoodies and shirts you are wearing in the videos?
How is the fork now?
How's the fork doing dude??
Do you have a link to the Friday blog? I would like to sign up.
Head to our website and wave your mouse around the screen. It's our newsletter during the times we don't have enough time to do the Tuesday Tune videos (ie summer).
@@VorsprungSuspension Sign me up for more content!
Me too!!
Fascinating. I also ride a Deviate 👌. Do you have any thoughts on the Helm? I find I need to run it at a much lower pressure than any other fork I've owned in order to get it how I like it.
After upgrading my HT from XC bike with 32mm stanchions to Trial/Enduro HT with 35mm stanchions(anvil of a bike), am I right in thinking, that bigger diameter fork will ramp up more? Since bigger stanchions means bigger piston and more air volume, and looking at hydraulic brakes and air compressors, I'm fairly convinced that this is the case. However I did not realise it before buying. I think it adds quite important aspect to buying more aggressive bikes: They don't only "give" more travel and strength, but might actually ride harsher in easy terrain? It'd be awesome to hear from #Vorsprung, or maybe an episode is justified? Any thoughts from general public are welcome too off course.
The stanchion diameter doesn't affect the progressiveness. It's determined by the volumes of the positive and negative air chambers (which all change equally as you change stanchion diameter). Your new fork could of course be more progressive anyway but it's not because of the stanchion diameter. If your fork is too linear you can add volume spacers. If it's not linear enough you can remove volume spacers if there are any, or buy a vorsprung luftkappe or smashpot if your fork is compatible :)
Wider stanchions mainly affect the torsional rigidity, which could feel slightly harsher but brings the benefit of your wheel actually pointing in the correct direction..
I don't think that's how it works Maciej
Just wanted to add that with increased rigidity there is less binding which should lead to a smoother ride
How does the ReAktiv damper in the Fox compare to the new one in the RockShox? Has it improved anything or is everything essentially the same?
I’m probably on a bike that has more travel than I need ,set up right I only use about 80 percent of it most of the time ,
But I love the geo of the enduro bikes
Nowt wrong wiv sum emergency rations
Do you have a detailed instructions on how to install this on a Rockshox Lyric
Steve - great video! Thanks again! I have a couple of questions. So heavier riders should be on shorter travel bikes, because they are starting off farther toward the human factor limit and therefore have less range to utilize? Vice-a-versa for lighter riders? Other than geometry if suspension is set-up properly, then owning N+1 bikes doesn't provide much benefit. The so-called this is my trail bike and this is my big bike is an invalid reason to own more than 1 optimized bike. Do you have a hypothetical travel limit for most of us (you must have thought about this one). Since geometry has improved over the years particularly with shorter travel bikes, are we narrowing in on the human limit through experience. Many of us are riding short travel bikes succesfully in situations that were only deemed big territory. I don't think my skill has improved that much. I feel geometry has increased confidence and capability, but don't notice the travel as a limiting factor. A few years ago, when purchasing an 11-6 from PUSH, I spoke with Darren. I mentioned how impressed I was with the shorter travel bike and its capabilities. He said, that most bikes (regardless of travel) utilize about the same amount travel for a given trail, except for the big hits. Does your hypothesis explain why Aggy this past week was able to ride Darkfest on a trail bike with dual crown (evil insurgent) and while everyone else was on a DH bike.
please write a book about suspension theory!!!!!!! :-)
There are already far more comprehensive texts out there for general suspension theory, such as John Dixon's The Shock Absorber Handbook, and Race Tech's Motorcycle Suspension Bible. They don't contain MTB-specific stuff, but they are brilliant resources on their own.
I'd much rather have burlier forks than lighter forks... I've destroyed the bushings in a yari in like 4 months and the bushings in a BOS deville 160 in 3... I weigh 65 kg...
That just sounds like you've not taken care of your fork.
i come to the internet for precise answers to the big questions of life. he did not say how many mm of travel i need, aaarrrghhhhhhhh!!!
N+0, where N is the amount you use.
Need more travelssss
I want my fork to always have about 5-10mm more travel than I will probably ever use because I absolutely hate having my fork bottom out. Why not? Thoughts?
Btw. I ride a relatively long and slack 29er bike with 140mm rear and 150mm front on sometimes very rough trails as for example Finale.
At times I get the feeling of my rear wheel hanging up on successive mid to large size hits. I never feel like my fork doesn't have enough travel, even though it is set up to basically never bottom out and doesn't really have much travel for this kind of use.
Is that to be expected with any bike? Do I not have enough travel? Could it be caused by the Mondraker suspension design/axle path?
I weigh 70kg/155lb, like running relatively little sag at about barely 30% rear and 10-15% front. I run fast rebound, about mid HS compression and little LS compression compared to riding buddies. I Don't seem to remember this sensation from my dh bikes a few years back but then again that is so long ago I might just not have ridden them as hard and/or had no idea about what the suspension was doing.
Would love to hear your thoughts and an't say often enough how much I love this series and hope you keep it up :)
I suppose the whole "cut the o-ring off" thing was basically one way of saying "make it feel good and be happy with it whether it's using full travel or not" so your setup sounds pretty reasonable to me.
The Mondrakers aren't particularly remarkable one way or another regarding axle path and leverage rate - most pedalable bikes (bar the high pivot ones) tend to feel a bit harsh and overwhelmed in really rough stuff compared to DH bikes for sure. There is realistically no replacement for displacement when it comes to running over stuff. As Seb Stott put it a while back - "Suspension travel: more is more."
I've been in that range, and accepted a compromised answer - you can give up some mid-range support (and I'm talking even after the improvement of a Luftkappe) and lean a bit more on the LSC and drop air pressure a touch then add a spacer. The near-sag performance in normal cases is the same, it's still basically impossible to use that last bit of travel (still feels good in the bank), and when I'm getting that same sensation of getting hung up on successive hits, the front is tracking a bit easier through stuff and I can retain a little bit more momentum. I kinda did the same on the back, but the band-aid there is adding a volume spacer to + and - side, and actually leaning on HSC with reduced LSC to try and keep that rear axle more active. Again, there's no free lunch and it bobs like a mofo on flat trails and pavement, but if I ignore that I'm still faster everywhere.
I'm on a similar bike (slack 150/130mm 29er), but I run 25-28% sag up front with 30% out back and prefer that very non-linear fork feel... so no way this will 100% answer the questions for you, but it's an approach that overall worked for me (or at least led me to a compromise I was happier with).
Thanks for the answers guys. Seems like my feeling that a bit more travel might not be bad was probably correct. I really like the snappy yet stable feeling of the long 140/150mm bike though...always compromises..
@@TJ-gh6cg For my part, improving the fork seemed to help everything, but doesn't detract a lot from the overall snappiness.
I look at suspension like this;
I set and then make the appropriate adjustments based on MY riding style. (now this changes as I progress or regress for that matter)
My goal is to make the bike(s) as stable as possible while utilizing the majority of performance of the bikes design.
Setup will always be a compromise, but less so for the majority of riders (Read: slow! lol) Of course that is subjective.
But personally, I think that unless a rider is very fast and consistent, the flaws of any setup/performance will not be so exaggerated.
In summary, it is best to get the setup as close as possible as it was designed but yet good enough for a particular rider and riding style.
I also think coils are making a 'comeback' (not really a CB) because many of the makers are churning out better quality products. Other than probably Ohlins, and maybe Fox in the past, other suspension maker components have been made half-ass and heavy imo...
Setup is always a compromise, regardless of rider speed - you're exactly right that if it's not exaggerated it doesn't matter (and the one valid complaint people have about getting performance opinions from slow and light journalists).
I think the quality has always been there for anybody willing to pay the price - what I'm actually excited about is the Marzocchi line - imagine solid mid-range Fox dampers on chassis that isn't dictated by weight weenies... that stuff is going to be gold for a big aggressive rider like myself. Half-assed quality is always easy to achieve, and while weight tends to be correlated with that, it's isn't 1:1 and too often well-heeled riders use that as a proxy for quality, which is why top performing components have a lot of money spent on extra machining steps that don't benefit tubby Clydes like myself... which is why my best setup is actually a reworked Yari running a Luftkappe and a Charger damper kit.
@@tehllama42 I think we are on the same page mate.
Just watched this all for the 3rd time to make sure the info was taken in well. Just noticed the 5 thimbs downs people gave. Are they mad at information? do they hate the truth? Must be Wanna Be Endurbros who insist on a 170mm travel bike at their xc trails.
Bring back the the videos pleased
It's a busy time of year in Whistler...he's probably going mad in the shop 🤪
Late in this one i know but. In my opinion you are missing an absolutely fundamental part. It's not the spring thats supposed to stop you from bottoming out. It's the damper, if you are bottoming out you shouldn't install a stiffer spring, you should add more compression damping or re-shim the shock. The fact that people add tokens or increase pressure in the air shocks is that it's just a simple work around that is not the beat solution.
You are dealing with the absorption of energy. If you look at a significant compression event with high energy and you see how much of the energy that is absorbed by the spring and how much is absorbed by the damper you see that the spring is just a tiny tiny amount of the total energy.
How stiff the damper is, is a function of compression velocity. Just plotting linear curves like here is a huge simplification that sends the wrong signals to people on how to solve bottoming out.
I would not agree with that at all. The damper's job is to prevent excessive motion and resonant vibration to keep the bike and rider stable. Compared to the spring, it does very little to reduce bottoming out (especially in current forks where it does almost nothing whatsoever); damping forces in MTB suspension are a small fraction of the peak spring forces. Hydraulic bottom out systems are a different matter as you can get a lot of force out of them without overdamping the majority of the stroke.
@@VorsprungSuspension Thank you for taking your time to reply. I have been thinking about this alot as there are so many people in the mtb world that have an oppinion on shocks but a lot of them are seem clueless. You seem to know your stuff though. I don't agree the least bit though about the damper only being there to prevent vibration. It is about stopping excessive motion, especially at higher compresion velocities. Here is how I'm thikning. It's all about energy absorbtion (force times displacement), not force. Lets assume a drop of 1m with a bike plus rider weighing 100kg. The energy that needs to be absorbed in that is about 980J (E=Mgh), or 490J if we assume a 50/50 distribution between front and rear shock. The rear shock has a 55mm stroke with a 550 spring. The spring in that case soaks up about 145J of that energy (which is then removed by the damper at rebound). The remaining 345J needs to adsorbed by the damper. Increasing the spring rate to 650 the energy absorbed by the spring is 172J. Not a hughe difference, the majority of the work i still done by the shock. Upping the spring to 650 will cause other problems with sag etc. Sure, as the velocity decreases towards the end of the shock stroke the spring becomes more dominant in soaking up the last bit of energy. But if you are dependant on spring here I belive you are underdamped to start with. The spring mostly is for setting and mainitaing sag/ride height.
An air shock is different with the porgression of those. There you can playaround with pressure and tokens to prevent bottoming out. However, that'll make the ride alot harsher the more the shock is compressed. Lets say in a banked corner or in a compresssion/dip in the trail. This prevents optimum performance of the damping throughout the shock stroke. The progressive nature of an air shock is both good and bad. It'll definitely make rebound damping way more complicated. I haven't done the math but I suspect that the rebound damping on air shock is massive compared to a coil. You should know? To me it feels like the shock manufacturers are taking the negative side of air shocks and turning it around to something positive.
The parallel I draw here is how we do it on the sleds if we constantly bottom out, we don't change springs if we bottom out, we add compression damping, if adding clicks isn't sufficent we re-shim. Depending och shock design the slows speed compression can have a massive effect. Of course, if the spiring is too soft so low ride height causing bottom outs it's a different story.
Put a damper and a spring in the dyno and log force displacement, preferably at constant velocity. You'll see a flat line on the spring and as you increase velocity and it goes over a critical point the damper will be stiffer than the spring. The area under the curve is the energy absorbed.
Please change my mind......
@@IIIkGT cyclical motion of any kind is vibration. When you say "excessive motion", that is vibration, because it returns.
I'm not saying that you could not reduce travel usage with HSC, I'm saying that we usually choose not to use that avenue as the primary form of bottoming resistance with MTBs, because the rigid sprung mass is very low and the rider is far from rigid. Compared to a sled, which has about 200kg of (essentially rigid) sprung mass, a bike has about 5% as much. This brings us to three reasons why we don't recommend trying to increase HSC on modern MTB forks in order to prevent bottoming:
1. In order to get sufficient HSC that it makes any significant difference to bottoming resistance, you need to have enough that the wheel vibration mode is way overdamped - ie the wheel can't move freely enough relative to the rigid sprung mass of the bike. That causes harshness to the rider because the damping forces and input energy from bumps now have far more force with which to accelerate & vibrate the sprung mass. On a sled, there is 200kg of sprung mass to accelerate before the rider feels much.
2. Because most MTB forks now are air sprung, they have a degree of pneumatic damping - they act as a heat pump due to the difference in adiabatic vs isothermal compression. In other words, increasing the spring rate on an air sprung fork increases your effective damping rate in direct proportion. This effect is reduced quite a bit with coil forks, but there is still some significant spring & damping coming from the compression of the internal volume of the fork itself.
2. Because of points 1 and 2, all MTB fork dampers currently have VERY light HSC damping. Changing a Grip2 or Charger2/2.1/3 HSC setting from minimum to maximum, with stock valving, makes negligible difference to how much travel you use, even though it roughly doubles the compressoin damping compared to the lightest setting, because double nothing is still nothing.
Because of this, we have to make practical recommendations. You can revalve a fork with way firmer HSC and it'll begin to limit the travel, but it'll also hurt your hands. With most stock forks though, the compression adjustment does not do much. They used to do a lot more - I think we have the MTBR forums to thank for the now pretty much useless range of compression adjustment.
Shocks are not identical, because some of them do have significantly more effective HSC adjusters for starters, but the same principles apply.
Furthermore, you can't really use particle energy absorption approximations for mountain bikes, because the rider buckles under a certain amount of force and absorbs more of the energy themselves. Otherwise people would die from jumping BMXes.
Like the way he is tell people that want more mid stroke support, to stop riding so much travel? Customers are not always right after all?
If you want to eliminate fork dive buy the motion fork: ua-cam.com/video/pE_YljIuuQg/v-deo.html
So some people want a fork that does not actually work. Simple, get a rigid fork.
These would be such better podcasts if the guy had a microphone and got rid of the loud Nintendo intro
Can you make more videos? I really enjoy watching these.
Nice intro
MAHALO, MY DUDEE
Why does this video look like I was filmed in 2014