Very nice but I think they’ve sold you a 29er instead! 😉
So my trusty Spitfire had its Pike and DBair serviced by TFTuned recently. Really impressed by their service – ridiculously quick turnaround, sent on the Wednesday, serviced on the Thursday, back on the Friday! Phoned me once to the discuss the fork requirements, again for shock stuff and finally to take payment. Detailed discussions about my wants/needs as a rider and about the condition of the items and what was needed.
I’d initially ordered a FAST damper to be fitted to the Pike but they were out of stock with no idea of when they might be back in. Part of the reason was wanting to get the damper tune better suited to the Luftkappe’s less regressive beginning stroke and more progressive end stroke. Anyway, they found that the Pike had a lot of binding/friction which was slowing its rebound, hence me having the rebound damper fully open. They changed the rebound shim stack to a lighter tune as I run relatively low psi and like it quite fast – not sure if it’s their own custom tune or one of the two alternate rebound stacks shown in the Pike service manual. They took it back out to 160 from 150mm too – I decided I wanted to run the longer fork softer so the sagged ride height is the same as with 150mm up front – swapping the Luftkappe over at the same time.
Anyway, whatever they’ve done it feels great! I’m running close to 25% sag on the fork with about 28% on the shock – it basically sits about level, just 40mm lower once sagged (most full-sus bikes sit deeper at the back, so everything gets slacker). Pre-Luftkappe more than 20% sag felt too divey and adding tokens only made it harsh deep in the travel. With the -2 deg headset it’s at 64.2 deg head angle in trail mode, 63.7 deg in uplift mode, 345 or 339mm static BB height.
The DBair needed a new piggyback due to scratches where the IFP runs and the anodising was (evenly) worn on the slidey air bits – didn’t need replacing now but probably before the next service was due, so it’s now full shiny stealth black.
Previously I’d been running the Cane Creek Spitfire base tune as it worked for averagely heavy, averagely fast me. Paul said he’d set it up his way for me based on my info and mentioned that his own bike has the same kinematics as a Spitfire (a Kingdom Ti thing) so he knew it well.
Once they were back I noticed about a third of the spokes in my rear wheel were completely loose – it’s been retensioned but there’s a big flat spot about 100mm long and 3mm deep. End of line Flow EX to be ordered – I have two matching wheelsets that swap between both bikes and I like these rims.
I’ve since had a few rides where I kept thinking the rear wheel had finally given up or I’d got a partly deflated tyre. Apart from the slightly ovality everything looks and feels solid – I’ve been stopping mid trail and pulling and poking at it!
Yesterday I realised what’s been going on – I’ve been hitting rough stuff and the back end just going soft and letting it pass in a really plush manner, hence that feeling of the back tyre being squishier than normal. And the new tune on the shock has a bit more low speed compression damping but a bit less high speed compression. So now we have a damping curve that goes more strongly regressive on sharp hits before the leverage curves ramps it up deeper in the travel. Firm when you pedal or pump, not super plush over tiny stuff but hit a mass of roots or (yesterday) a carpet of flints down the side of a field (a rare true XC outing!) it goes all magic carpet. Bloody brilliant!
It hasn’t been using any more travel when hucking off drops, still only going all the way at my biggest or most inept.
So there’s a top tip for Cane Creek’d Spitfire owners – try adding about 5 clicks of LSC and removing 0.5-1 turn of HSC. If it bottoms hard then increase the HSC a bit and/or add volume spacers.