Querying something I was told in Evans Cycles. The guy in the shop told me that I should only ride the shocks on the “firm” setting when climbing. He said to leave it on in the flat sections would damage the pistons. Is this true? Frankly as I like to ride hard on the flats & plan to use the bike doing XC I would like to ride it often on the firm setting.

I checked the Fox website & I couldn’t find any advice that would back up what the store guy told me.

The shocks on the bike (Trek Fuel Ex 9.8) are:

Front suspensionFox Performance 34 Float, FIT4 3-position damper, E2 tapered steerer, Boost110, G2 Geometry w/51mm offset, 120mm travel

Rear suspensionFox Performance Float EVOL, RE:aktiv 3-position damper, tuned by Trek Suspension Lab, 7.25×1.875″

Thanks!!

I’d take what they (Evans) tell with a pinch of salt. Some people working there are great, some of them aren’t.

I was sold a bike with far too soft fork. I complained about it, got it inflated, but the lockout wasn’t working. It finally got fixed (cable wasn’t tight). I bought it via cycle to work scheme and I was meant to get 60 quid off accessories, which I didn’t (got it sorted out later). The shop assistant didn’t know that I was meant to get free service for 6 weeks, as well as at 6 and 12 months after purchase either.

I was sold a bike with far too soft fork. I complained about it, got it inflated

😯

I guess in theory it could damage it. The lockout on Fox forks is a compression damper, air in the chamber stays the same, air pressure and temperature increases as it resists moving, and converts that energy into heat.

“might” damage the compression damper if you leave it like that. Might also damage it if you leave it in that setting for long periods, might get stuck like that.

TBH play with the fork a bit, there are no hard and fast rules about it, on loose/rocky techy climbs I use the rear shock on fully open as it’ll give you better traction. I only ever use full lock out or firm on tarmac

I’m not sure how you call “pumping the air into fork”, lol! It was my first MTB and didn’t have a shock pump at the time.

Bit pointless having a 120mm fork if you plan to run it in a firm setting. Firm up for climbs by all means but unless you’re riding very smooth trails then running in firm mode will only slow you down and make for a poorer quality ride and negate to whole point of having suspension.

Try running 15% – 20% sag for a firmer ride rather than using the firm setting but if you’re not getting near full travel then you want to be thinking about reducing air pressure. From seeing your other post I think you’ll be wanting the travel for flat and downhill sections and just use the firm settings for non technical climbs. You need to bare in mind that softer suspension can get up up hill more efficiently in some situations.

You will need to just spend time on the bike and gets a feel for what works and what doesn’t. If you go onto Trek’s website they have a suspension calculator you can use as a starting point for setting up the front and rear suspension with recommended air pressure and rebound settings based on rider weight.

In alpine events such as http://www.eigerbike.ch there appears to be long sections where firm setting would be more appropriate?

See my edit above.

Really appreciate that Alex. I didn’t know that information was on the Trek site–will bookmark that.