Coil Conversion for the Pike

Getting irritated by stick down on my pike now, I can’t be bothered servicing the air spring every other month to stop it from happening.

Has anyone here tried the coil conversion from CRConception in France?

Nope, but very tempted so just sponging onto your thread. (I’ve had no reliability issues, I just miss my coil lyriks)

Yeah snap, my old mans coil custom shimmed Fox 36s from 08 are also making me jealous. Bollocks have forks got better, the things are so unbelievably sensitive that they make a pair of 55 Ti’s feel horrible.

And they’re supportive – and they never go wrong!

*sigh*

The Pikes are going to get SKF seals, the coil conversion and the Fast damper mod to see if I can get them closer to the ancient 36’s. The only thing I’m worried about is bottom out resistance, which could be controlled with oil volume in the old Lyrik.

Oh wow, I contacted them – the coil springs are made to measure, eg to exactly emulate your PSI (although they will have more midstroke support and therefore feel harder in the midstroke) and progressiveness (if you want). So they can be wound in a linear or progressive fashion!

🙂

I’m sold! I will put an order down this weekend. Buh-bye air, I’m going full old school!

Do they make anything for 32mm Revelation?

I don’t think so Qwerty but you could try asking!

Nothing to really add, other than having bought another DH bike coils are super smooth. The old school 888’s on the Demo that was stolen were incredible and made my 34’s feel like they were filled with wood!

Air springs have done on leaps and bounds but I still prefer coils. Downside I guess is that they’re weighty and a pain to tune.

The spring on this design is quite short! It resides in the lowers and doesn’t extend all the way to the top cap. It’s not like the full length assembly on my old Lyrik, the weight gain only appears to be 100g or so.

The nice thing is, is that they can closely match your preferred air settings – so it won’t be a pain to tune.

It comes out at about the same weight as a 2016 Fox 36! Very respectable for a coil if it is true!

are you talking about this one?

fwiw replacing the grease in the lower air chamber with float fluid stopped it for me

still interested in this tho

Pretty cool… Think I’ll probably go for it too.

That’s the one kimbers, there are a few threads floating around on the net on German and French forums if you don’t mind using google translate or trying out your own dodgy German/French.

That little sleeve is to stop it from rubbing on your fork and making it unable to be converted back to air. I thought that was a nice touch.

Anyway, 70 odd quid is a cheaper punt than buying a new fork.

qwerty – Member

Do they make anything for 32mm Revelation?

Standard, u-turn and dual-position springs from Sektors should all work there (possibly depending on model year)

Wow this looks great. Surprised at the price – cheaper than a fork service!

Tom, did you ever do the conversion in the end?

TF Tuned put a chopped down Lyrik coil spring in my Pikes earlier this year after the airspring packed up……vast improvement in performance and feel 😀

Spoke to TF Tuned, they don’t have a kit that’s fit for public consumption at the moment. To have them do a coversion will cost the price of a normal service plus£100 – so a bit spendy (but you are getting a new top cap, spring and spring rod). They did however also mention that both they and Push have home conversion kits in the pipeline. Think I’ll hold fire and see what appears

….freaking sweet. Air suspension is for the unwashed masses.

Getting tired with how much my Monarch moves under weight changes as well, set it up for 25-30 percent sag in the attack position and it ends up 35-40 sat down and 45 when climbing steep terrain, making technical climbs a pain. A coil, with the better midstroke would give more support on steep rocky technical climbs. To get the kind of midstroke support I’m looking for, I need bugger loads of volume reducers in my shock. Which then kicks like a **** mule on high speed hits. I want support and a more linear end stroke, thanks. Not what amounts to a 120mm bike because I’ve stuffed so many spacers in.

We can lose so much weight in the wheels, bars, saddles, cranks and frame these days. If you have a target weight for an enduro bike (say 29-30lb) and the budget, why bother with air, when coil offers better performance?

What if you ride with varying amounts of weight?

E.g shorter rides with no pack and a single bottle v all day Lakes epic with pack and 2 litres of water?

do you change you air pressure for different rides, based on kit?

I’m sure some people would change pressure if there was a large weight difference depending on type of ride.

If I put a riding pack on, it adds about 2-3lb of weight. If I was doing an all day epic I think I’d just bang the preload up on the shock, or better yet, run a coil with a boost valve type job. Or buy a spring one weight (+25lb) higher – still beats having to regularly check your shock PSI – in terms of extra workload.

Anyway, the weight difference is not enough for me to care.

IIRC you have a Reign, right?

To put it bluntly, mine rode like a sack of sh*t with anything even close to 30% sag.

It’s quite a high leverage ratio bike that needed a lot of mid stroke support, otherwise it felt like a soggy mess.

I ended up running 20% max on a Float X2 & it was great. Appreciate I race a fair bit, and may ride a bit harder than the average, but the Reign was spot on with less sag.

Now running a similar setup on my Patrol, I think I genuinely don’t like RS shocks because the Monarch was amazingly bad with anything less than 30% sag, but the extra sag then introduced the other issues I dislike of running a lot of sag.

I guess it’s all personal.

*searches Roots and Rain for Hob Nob*

Hob Nob is pretty quick – he’s always miles faster than me when we’re at the same races and I’m not completely useless, just very mediocre in a racing context. 😉

Tom, I think you’re running way too much sag. Your Reign has a similar linkage progression to my Spitfire, 3.3 to 2.6 vs 2.9 to 2.2, so both in the 20-25% progression region. That ramp up adds compression damping and a stiffer spring rate as you head deeper in the travel, so running 25% sag I’m using the travel nicely but never bottoming out so hard that I feel it run out of travel, and that’s with an XV DBair.

I’ve asked quite a few more knowledgeable people about how to set sag on the back and the best advice I’ve had is to set downhill bikes when standing, XC bikes when seated and trail/enduro bikes as the average of standing and seated. Obviously sag is only a starting point. If you’re running more sag than ideal then it’ll sag even more when climbing because there’s less anti-squat to hold it up as you get deeper in the travel.

Also, adding volume spacers does not add midstroke support, it actually does the opposite, by increasing the rate at the end stroke you’re making the mid stroke relatively softer and you’re not changing the midstroke at all vs the initial travel.

Now running a similar setup on my Patrol, I think I genuinely don’t like RS shocks because the Monarch was amazingly bad with anything less than 30% sag, but the extra sag then introduced the other issues I dislike of running a lot of sag.

I guess it’s all personal.

Cheers Hob Nob, that’s interesting to know. The thing is, I like the BB nice and low and the kicked out head angle from running the back softer than the front for steep riding as it creates a nice weight distribution on the bike – going up to 15 percent wont work with my Pikes unless I’m doing a race run. Maybe I could run a Float X2 with 25 percent sag and get a happy medium.

Chief

Am I missing something?

Yes, you don’t add spacers without reducing pressure or you’ll never get into the latter third of the travel. If you want an airshock to feel like a coil you want it more linear, not less.

I get that, so there is no difference, given the same sag values, when more spacers are added? Cheers chief.

So the answer is to lower the spacer count and up pressure, whilst possibly reducing the sag value?

The desire for lower weights has really handicapped forks in the last few years. Huge expense and twiddly dials have been needed to make them fee like coil sprung forks, which is a bit daft when you think about it- just bulk buy some Ti springs! Tbh I think the main reason bike manufacturers like air springs is because you don’t have to worry about rider weights when selling bikes; just put the same fork on all sizes and let the rider adjust the air pressure.

I’m hoping the huge amount of R&D being pumped into 3D printed coil springs by the automotive industry will trickle into mtb, as this’ll give the option of custom spring rates but with uber low weight

Yes, that’s what I’d try.

I think one of the risks with air springs is how stiction makes you think you need more sag – so when comparing side by side with coil springs to get that plush feel the air pressure has to be rather low. But then actually ride the bikes and as soon as you’re moving the much greater forces on the shock and fork overwhelm the seal friction easily, plus there’s almost no stiction (zero suspension movement requires perfectly smooth ground and no pedalling/pumping forces from above).

I did a ghetto conversion of some old Floats to coils after an internal scratch meant it never kept air pressure. Sooo much better and 100% reliable. Do it.

Out of interest how does the coil conversion work for the negative spring? Do you replace that with a small coil too?

You don’t need a negative spring on a coil. It’s only there on an air spring to try to cancel out the static pressure causing the equivalent of excessive preload. A coil spring should have zero force at zero travel and then be linear – the negative spring tries to push back against the positive air spring to give you minimal force at zero travel.

This ^ but there will be some form of negative spring just to act as a top-out bumper

Surely that would be a second coil spring in parallel?

Nah, it sits under the glide rings etc so it only comes into play at full extension. Sometimes it’s just a bumper, but top outs are just as nasty with a coil spring if you don’t have one

E.g.

This is an interesting read.

Feeling a bit pleased with myself for seeking out one of the last sets of Coil Lyriks in Europe 4 years ago when I built my meta.

Yeah, I jumped on the Pike bandwagon for my Hemlock, rode them for a while, put my coil Lyriks back in. They were about 50% heavier mind but pretty much crapped on the Pikes performance wise imo. Not just the coil to be fair, I preferred the damper too.

God damnit, this thread is eventually going to hurt my wallet.

So the coil

or

this

http://www.mtb-news.de/forum/t/awk-doppelkammersystem.728967/page-18#post-13323064

it looks to be the same as the ohlins air system and manitou IRT upgrade

My Lyriks I removed the floodgate and I’ve never once felt they underperformed at all.
Not compared to me anyway.

Just come by some Pikes, so will be interesting to see, they will start their life on the Lyrik bike for direct comparison, before probably going to a HT.

And by the sounds of it maybe getting a coil all of their own.