Im looking at buying my first full suss bike next summer. The bikes that the LBS carry are usually 120-130mm and 150+mm of travel.

My question is should i start off buying a short travel bike and then having to upgrade after 1-2 years or should i just be overbikeed from the start?

Shorter travel every time. Unless you live in the alps or somewhere.

What are you planning on riding?

What makes you think 120mm will be underbiked?

To be honest i still don’t know 100% what most of my riding will consist of becuse this summer i only had time to ride the flow trails.

Wandering free?

What makes you think 120mm will be underbiked?

Because i feel like somtimes i need at least 30-40mm+ of travel , but now that i think about am i just imagining this need for more travel ? ❓

Summer i only had time to ride the flow trails

Such as….

I’ve just gone from a 140mm Cannondale Trigger to a Whyte T130rs with you guessed it…130mm travel.
Far better, more capable and confidence-inspiring bike. It’s not the travel necessarily…more how it feels.
I could do talking bollux though 😉

Wombling free

TBH it doesn’t really matter all that much- the actual bike makes a huge difference. my Remedy 29 is a monster truck, 150mm of travel and clown wheels- but it’s still great at red routes and simple stuff. And you can get shorter travel bikes that can rip up more challenging trails. These days there are loads of bikes to choose from that can do both extremely well.

I’d go for 120-130mm, unless you have a specific use for the 150mm e.g. racing enduros or uplift days.

Although I imagine either would be fine for most types of riding.

Geometry > travel

It isn’t just travel that makes a bike.I suggest you try a few.

Upgrade=Moar travel?

depends where you ride, and which bike you’re considering

Depends on your riding really – however 90%+ of the people I ride with all have 150mm+ and ride them everytwhere. Those with shorter travel bikes (apart from the whippets), generally end up with bigger bikes eventually.

They are used for Alps, Peak, Derbyshire Dales, Trail Centres (mostly BPW) and all day epics. I’ve never heard thr phrase overbiked uttered once, apart from on here. That said, half the group ride HT’s through winter.

Don’t listen to the socialists on here – if they think you have too much suspension, they’ll insist you give some away… 😉

I agree that it’s not all about the amount of travel but the bike as a whole package. Some short travel bikes are really capable and some long travel bikes pedal really well. Get demoing some bikes to see what you like. I went with a short travel but very capable bike in the end.

As above its the whole package, don’t let more travel unnecessarily sway you.

Also…getting a long travel bike and running it as a soda may give you some mental comforting, but does make jumping (a reason I hear a lot for a bigger bike) a lot harder and more uncontrollable. Big soggy bike, particularly in the forks is way worse on steep too.

If you want more for comfort, bear in mind if you’re feeling beat Up, you’re most probably riding harder for longer, of course youre going to feel beat up.

I’ve been up and down travel over the years and have come to the conclusion that for all the riding I do a 100mm 29er has enough travel.

I ride a rigid fat bike and a 160mm travel bike in the same trails.
Neither is better – they’re just different.
I can ride lines on the far bike the full suss struggles with (or at least I struggle with on it) and vice versa.

There are good bikes and bad bikes, but travel is rarely a determining factor on that.

I always think your better off using say 90% of your 130mm travel most of the time than lugging round 160mm of travel that you only fully utilise 10% of the time. So are you really a 90%er of 160mm? But I ride a 120mm hard tail…

The reasons not to have a bigger travel bike:

1) Some big travel bikes are hard work on smoother trails

2) For any given spec, a longer travel bike will be heavier

3) For any given spec,a longer travel bike will (probably) be more expensive

If you can afford it, and you are not actually racing XC (where weight really matters), then a modern 150mm bike is light, fun and capable.

qwerty – Member

I always think your better off using say 90% of your 130mm travel most of the time than lugging round 160mm of travel that you only fully utilise 10% of the time.

Sure, but these days the weight penalty you’re lugging around is often small between a “trailbike” and an “enduro bike”- you’re likely to end up with something like Pikes, a Reverb, 471s, some Minions, wide bars and strong brakes… Everything on my 150mm 29er would make total sense on a 120mm 29er, as long as I was riding it on similar stuff

NW – I wasn’t thinking of the weight so much, more just getting the most use out of the given travel. But I agree, probably not a huge difference in weight.

underbiked… overbiked…

wombling free… the wombles of wimbledon common are weeeeee…

Gwurk the comedy womble- picking up other people’s jokes and recycling them 😆

You didn’t think I actually read the thread did you?

Not digging today? that mean you’re going riding tomorrow?

Whereabouts?

Probably- I thought maybe thornielee. Or maybe I’ll get Chris out of hibernation

Overbiked = fat. Underbiked = lacking in skilz.

Hth.

Proper answer though as above there’s a lot more to a bike than the travel. Ride a few and see. there isn’t much point carrying around travel you won’t use and a well set up 130 or 120mm should be fine even for the odd alpine trip. But a decent 150mm bike shouldn’t be that slow uphill these days either.

Thornie sounds like the right place to wake a fella up.
I love that place. CBA mountainbiking these days either.

To answer the OP
if you want a longer travel bike that’d still rides well in less than gnarly terrain look for one with a very progressive leverage curve.

if you want a longer travel bike that’d still rides well in less than gnarly terrain look for one with a very progressive leverage curve.

I rode a friend’s Capra for some of a less than gnarly ride a couple of weeks ago. 170mm front, 165mm rear travel – which I really noticed when I sat on it and it sagged what seemed like miles. But it felt absolutely fine once riding, far from a pointlessly soggy sofa of a long travel bike, handling well and climbing brilliantly. And it has one of the most progressive leverage curves of any bike on the market. I think YT might sell quite a few…

Are you a bit heavier than your friend or does he have it set up with too much sag? or are you just not used to long travel bikes?
That progressiveness is what makes the Capra sit so nicely at the sag point giving you a nice firm platform to push from. Run with the same % of sag and compression my Capra jumps and pumps better than my 120mm slopstyle bike.
I run the slope bike with way less sag, 50psi tyres and in the middle “pedal” compression setting rather than full open for jumps/berms.
Despite climing a minimum of 3000ft on every ride I never move the Capra’s compression lever from full open. infact. the lever’s taped in that position.
Forks these days (Lyriks especially) are already progressive enough. Thing is most folk run too much sag and then stick bits of plastic in to stop them bottoming out. ramping up the progression ruins that nice firm sag point. Run less sag. no plastic and they will give you a firmer ride same as the back end of that Capra. Yeah you lose a tiny bit of small bump suppleness but c’mon. if you’re riding a 170mm fork surely you’re hitting stuff fast/hard enough not to mind that.

There’s a couple of things i quite like about longer travel bikes:

1) with the massive assumption you’ve got decent spec parts (ie pikes etc) then i find due to the extra travel, the set up is actually less critical. you can run with the settings in the “middle” so to speak and pretty much the fork just works

2) You can run deliberately “soft” ie lots of sag, and get a nice comfy ride when you’re just pootling around

As with most of your *skills* advice Max

Are you a bit heavier than your friend or does he have it set up with too much sag? or are you just not used to long travel bikes?

We’re the same weight but from how much it sagged I think he’s running a bit more % sag than I do on my Spitfire (about 28%) but not too much – and I’m not used to long travel bikes, my “big” bike is only 140mm at the back and I’ve been solely on my hardtail recently.

But as you said, that’s what I noticed – once it’s settled into the sag it firms up really well – from the amount it squished down I thought it would pedal and pump badly but it was great at both. Light too. Only negatives I felt were too much seat tube length and too slack seat tube angle (at pedalling height) but only marginally.

was it a Large?
I’m on Medium. Despite being 5’11” and it has a little over 210mm of seatpost exposed (Rails to collar) at climbing height
I’m running 18-20% front 23-25% rear sag. Rarely ever use the last 10mm on the fork (but like all my forks that way). do on the shock.

I ride hardtails and BMX more than I ride mine.

Will make it very simple for you…

More downhill gnaaaarrrrrrrrr or you walk uphill. Then long travel.

Downs / ups / flats / uk riding mainly. Then shorter travel.

Don’t over think it

Job done. N

gwurk
As with most of your *skills* advice Max

Care to enlighten rather than just post stupid memes?

Here’s the thing, if you’re riding say a 100mm fork, if you have it too firm you don’t use any of the travel, and too soft and you’re sitting on the bump stops, ime, this means you need to get the correct fork pressure and chamber volume within a pretty small range. But a 150mm fork, well, that extra 2″ doesn’t sound like much (phnarr phnarr) but againm ime, makes all the difference. Now, the difference in preload and volume makes much less difference, as the fork simply has further to move before it hits either end stop. And that also makes sag less critical, as “somewhere in the lower 3rd of the travel” is simply a bigger range!

Sure you’ll disagree but hey, that’s my experience from running bikes from 80mm to 210mm travel!

(btw, i’m not saying a poorely set up fork IS a good idea, but lets be honest here, most of the time we just want to get out and ride our bikes, not phaff around the in car park with a shock pump because we’re carrying a bit more water today or because it’s cold etc, so a bigger operating window is a good thing i think)

*sigh*

Running your fork “deliberately soft”. ie. with too much sag ie. For “comfort” while pootilng around is going to equate to blowing through too much travel the first time you hit a transition or infact make any manouver where you are pushing through your bars or riding your bike properly. An overly soft fork is also way more likely to spit you on your chin in a corner.

This shouldn’t be enlightening. it’s the fundamentals of how suspension works.

You may well have experience. Experience is not the same as expertise or even knowledge or understanding. Not understanding the fundamentals and having no real knowledge of whatever you’ve experienced means every time you share advice. You are in fact more likely than not giving out poor advice.

The “stupid” meme summed up the above very well. I didn’t think it needed explaining. But then i wouldn’t think someone with an £800 bicycle fork wouldn’t understand how it worked either.