Looking for that magic suspension setting!

Does anyone else end up going round and round in circles looking for that magic suspension setting?

Ive got a Lyrik on the front and a Float X2 on the rear and I just cannot seem to get the feeling I want! Today I was suffering from bad arm pump on rocky descents, not sure if I just need to MTFU and stop giving the bars the death grip!

Yeah, loosen up on the bars a tad and the legs and feet on pedals, as for the suspension wind things in and out till you locate the middle then when it’s set in the middle wind things in and out till it feels better, all this 5 clicks out from fully clockwise or back it off 4 clicks from the open position is confusing,

If it’s spikey on the front adjust the rebound lever in big turns that way you will feel the changes more and fine tune it from individual clicks, I’ve always found bold changes to suspension set up necessary for my ham fisted fettling.

First off though set the sag properly, that’ll make the adjustments worthwhile,

I give TF tuned my details when they service my suspension. Can’t remember the last time I had issues with suspension set up. It mightn’t be perfect, but it’s good enough for me. If I do tinker, I make sure I write down what they’ve done first.

New or old Lyrik? They’re totally different beasts…

Soft hands helps a lot, if your death gripping no matter how the fork is its going to punish you.
For me the key to getting suspension right is knowing what each adjust does and how it changes the feel.
Then I got the avalanche damper set for what I wanted and all I had to do was set the lsc and rebound (1 click from suggested) and I tweak the air based on pie/beer consumption. Seems to work well enough.

New 2016 Lyrik at 170mm.

Running one token at the minute. I am leaving over 1″ of travel on the stanchion after a ride.

Complete and utter lack of match-fitness 😉

Plus you probably didn’t spot the smooth line until you’d gone past it – on the left most of the time until the gate and then absolutely as far over on the right as possible, most of the rest of the way…..

I had a moment liek that in Malaga a while back. Really fast, rocky trail, was taking a battering while flat out

One extra click of high speed and it was a totally different fork.

There’s no perfect suspension, accept it and move on 😉

The better you tune your suspension, the faster you go, and your suspension feels bad again,but you’re going faster.

Ps I too have a 2016 170mm lyrik, I felt it was running too deep into its travel, I wasn’t using full travel, I was 1 inch off full travel,but it still felt a bit wallowy ,so have now added another volume spacer,taking it to 2 spacers. It’s still an inch off using full travel,but now feels better. Well it Felt a bit better down charity lane last night. Not that this is directly applicable to you,but thought I would add my experience.

Similar thing on my 180mm Yari @ 417 last week. Couple less/more clicks of compression damping (can’t remember which) made things hugely smoother.
One thing I’ve learned with suspension is ‘a little at a time’. Don’t go tweaking all the knobs as you’ll get in a muddle..

If you’re riding rocky stuff and still have 25mm of unused travel then I’d say you’ve got things set up a bit too stiff. I think the Cane Creek field tuning guide is really good, whether or not you have a Double Barrel you can follow it with most decently adjustable gear:

http://www.canecreek.com/resources/products/suspension/double-barrel/DB_Field_guide.pdf

The key is to be very methodical with your tuning or you will end up getting nowhere!

Last time I went to Antur I got pretty bad arm pump and was rather annoyed because I was riding a bike with more travel and had been doing deadlifts (with one benefit being more grip strength). In retrospect, I’ve realised I was gripping too hard, putting too much weight through my hands and not driving enough from my hips and feet – plus the wider alloy bars I then had were rather harsh feeling and I was running my suspension a bit too hard. I’m curious to see what happens with improved technique plus some even wider and nicer feeling carbon bars.

If your fork is wallowing abut not using full travel you’d probably be better off removing a token and raising the pressure, rather than adding a token. Spring volume adjustments really only affect the last 25% of travel.

Rick Draper – Member

Running one token at the minute

OK this is really oversimple but so far, I’ve not met a single rockshox fork that feels good to me with 0 or 1 tokens- people (and RS) think 0 is the starting point but I reckon it’s more logical to start with half.

But it’s only starting points, you basically want to try everything- I figure out what feels good by going too far then winding it back. “bracketing” is the technical term but I call it “fannying about”

In the past I’ve tended to find a nice setting and leave it – which worked fine with Cane Creek shocks and with Marz RC3 series forks.

Mainly on the ubiquitous Rock Shox now and I’m finding it useful to get the token thingys right and then maybe vary the compression by a few clicks depending on where I’m riding (Pike RC).

Came a cropper on some steep Hebden steps after leaving the compression fully open the other weekend.

I’ve accepted the Pikes will never be as fluid and composed as my old Marz forks, but they’re good enough.

I’m finding my 2016 180mm lyrik likes to start with VERY low pressure! I’m at 40psi with 1 token

But then again i’m a bit of a ligthweight……….

The negative spring is the same size on all the Pikes, and a larger size on all the Lyriks. The positive spring varies in size with axle-crown length, so it’s smallest (and ramps up most) on a 120mm 26″ and longest on a 160mm 29″ or 180mm 27.5″. So the number of tokens to get the same ramp-up in the last 40% of travel will vary a lot.

I’m at 70psi and 1 token on a 160mm 27.5 (full-sus) but 100psi and 2 tokens on a 130mm 27.5 (hardtail) which seemed pretty weird to me when I set up the 130mm one recently. Both give about 15-20% sag with 80kg of me.

Ps I too have a 2016 170mm lyrik, I felt it was running too deep into its travel, I wasn’t using full travel, I was 1 inch off full travel,but it still felt a bit wallowy ,so have now added another volume spacer,taking it to 2 spacers. It’s still an inch off using full travel,but now feels better. Well it Felt a bit better down charity lane last night. Not that this is directly applicable to you,but thought I would add my experience.

Ahh our trails are the same! By the end of Cumberland my arms were ruined yesterday!

I am going to go out next week and try a few different things on a ride.

One thing that helped quite a lot with my hands on the new hardtail is moving a spacer to raise the bars by 5mm. Amazing how big a difference that made!

The key is to be very methodical with your tuning or you will end up getting nowhere!

^ +1

A lot of good advice here, recently spent a good few hours fine tuning the CCDB cs but it took a lot of patience.

I couldnt believe the difference an oil change made to my Pikes.
They’d only been serviced 4 months before too!

I read this post with interest/ confusion as my current bike is the first FS I’ve ever owned so have no reference point with which to judge if my suspension ‘feels right’. I’ve set up the sag as per recommendations given by manufacturer and set compression and rebound to mid way as a ‘happy medium’. If doesn’t seem to bottom out regularly and neither does it buck me off on landings but I’m fairly sure I’m not getting the best out of it. Ideally what characteristics am I looking for to know if I’m along the right lines?

I was considering going back to basics and running no volume spacers and work from that point.

So this is why you’re selling the Lyriks then Rick? Btw, the last inch of travel should be reserved for smacking things really hard….stuff that might bring you off.

I wouldn’t bother selling them mate, there’s no way the TF Tuned Fast tune will be far out for you. Been riding for 20 years nearly, on dozens of forks and I have yet to ride anything better.

My suspension feels really poor when I am not feeling confident but amazing if I’m on it..!