Yes and no.
On a run down a rocky downhill track, eg Rowarth, Potato Alley etc with some small drops on it the stanchion band will be about an inch from the top. With that psi.

Johnny Panic – Member
90kg rider 50psi no tokens 19% sag
80kg rider 60psi 2 tokens 25% sag
Doesn’t make sense…..

+1
There must be something anomalous going on here. Different pumps, different ways of measuring the sag, different variants of the forks, maybe some have more grease in them – influencing sag???

It is strange!

50 psi is set using my Fox pump and same reading on the zocchi pump. Check pressures every couple of weeks and they both always read the same. If you have a look at the Pike air pressures thread on here and MTBR, majority run way way under specced leg pressure for the best plushness and ride quality.

Sag is stood on pedals with all riding gear on, its a Santa Cruz Blur so quite a slackish head angle, that may put weight further back possibly, giving less sag than a more forward weight distributing bike?

Its the 150 solo air if that helps.

Mine is on a Enduro 29 so also slack. Fork lube used so stiction not really an issue.

So the “stiction” of a fork is nothing to do with using fork lube or any other lubricants on your stanchions. Especially as the wiper seals, if doing their job properly will wipe it off on the first stroke anyway. Its mainly to do with the tolerance between the CSU and the bushes in the lowers. Obviously if your fork is due a lower leg service, and the wiper seal/foamring are bone dry then they arent going to feel great.

160mm pike, 95kg, 70 psi, 25% sag. 2 tokens and 3 clicks of low speed compression. rebound set 4 clicks from fastest

I tend to set sag by bouncing and jiggling along in the attack position on a flat road and once the bike has settled into its true sagged state (overcoming any stiction) I then slide the O-rings down. If I just climb on the bike and stand in the attack position it tends to show less sag and the reading is less consistent.

Parkstar …what’s your small bump sensitivity like at 70 psi. I’m the same weight as you and am finding 60psi too harsh on the small stuff as its not really moving the fork at all. I find it takes a ‘bigger’ hit to coax some suppleness out of the fork but by then the fork pressure is too low for the hit. If that makes sense.

Just catching up on this thread again. I don’t know how some of you guys are measuring sag, but 90 kg mass with 50 psi and 19% sag cannot be correct. I’m getting more sag than that with 85 psi (same 90 kg rider). To be honest front sag is tricky to measure properly as you have to be in the attack position with a fair bit of weight on the bars. So straight away that’s going to be a massive variable from rider-rider in their interpretation of the attack position. If you just sit on the bike to measure sag, most of your weight is on the rear and front sag is minimal, which probably explains the above readings.

Hey Moshi….Mr 200Lbs & 60 psi/ three tokens here…

I’m at 60 psi no lsc. for local bridalways. There’s no gnarly trail in front of my house unfortunately. Running more air ( is this what you mean by higher spring rate ) loses most if not all small bump compliance and gives a very harsh ride. If I do happen along a rougher part of a trail I crank up the lsc…what else can I do? I seem to have a fork that sacrfices support for small bump sensitivity.

I can see your logic and I do think my air pressure is set on the high side for general trail riding (85 psi) – still dialling in mine. But I don’t want to drop too much pressure out in the name of small bump sensitivity. It feels great as it is on bigger hits and brake dive etc. I’m only running 3 or 4 clicks of LSC max. I seem to have a fork that sacrifices small bump sensitivity for overall support.

As far as tokens goes, the optimum number depends on what travel Pike you have and how big are your biggest hits. I’m on a 160 mm travel Pike with no tokens and not taking big jumps or drops to flat. So I can get away with zero tokens quite easily. If I was on a 120 mm Pike and taking a fair bit of air on rough trails, I’m sure I’d need 3 tokens to stop it bottoming.

Adding bottomless tokens reduces the air pressure required to support a given amount of sag. If the above graphs are correctly scaled then putting in three tokens halves the pressure to maintain the same sag as with no tokens.

I doubt in reality that tokens are going to affect your static sag measurement at a given air pressure. They obviously do make a big difference to the pressure you can run in order to prevent bottom out on big hits. They are intended for aggressive riders who would otherwise blow through their travel at a normal pressure setting.

I’m still dialling mine in also ( 3 months now..arrrgh ) on 160mm pikes and attack position stood up tending towards an over bars feel. Maybe I’m just expecting too much, I was going to say, at both ends of the travel spectrum but I’m not hitting bigish drops every day of the week. My main aim is to get sbs correct for bridalways etc. whilst having the option of being able to dive into the woods for some fun without blowing through travel. I realise that if I was to going to tackle surface to air at Aston hill I’d have to add air and then let some out if I wanted to hit the xc trail. This isn’t the idea behind a 160mm fork on an Enduro rig IMO.

The way I understood the graph is that the more tokens you add the more force is needed to achieve more travel. The charts show that adding more tokens doesn’t massively affect the force needed to activate the first part of travel ( the part of the travel I need for small bump sensitivity) thus allowing me to keep the 60psi for SBS without cranking the lsc up to stop me blowing through travel on the small stuff..

That’s about right. Basically you can run a bit more sag with each token added for the same maximum travel.

To be honest front sag is tricky to measure properly as you have to be in the attack position with a fair bit of weight on the bars.

I’ve never heard of anyone recommending setting sag with the bars weighted – all the advice I’ve had involves standing up and putting all your weight through the pedals.

How do you ensure you’re getting the same hands:feet weight distribution as the last time you tuned your fork?

My main aim is to get sbs correct for bridalways etc.

I think that’s probably expecting a bit too much if you still want it to feel good when hammering along proper trails. Such opposite ends of the spectrum. I’m also on a 160 mm travel Enduro and while SBS is not fantastic at 85 psi (actually it’s quite poor) it reacts well to technical trails, controls dive really well and takes bigger hits in its stride. Basically the faster I ride on rough trails, the better it gets.

I may well drop a bit of pressure out to make it more comfortable when chugging along bridleways, as I do still have some travel left in hand, but I don’t want to be relying on tons of LSC and bottom out tokens to prop up a 160 mm travel fork for fairly ordinary trail riding. I’d rather have more linear travel and a decent amount of chassis control from the air spring, with a moderate level of LSC to control bigger hits and brake dive on the steeps etc.

How are you getting on with the rebound setting? I’ve tried mine close to full quick through to 5 clicks off full slow and found very little difference to be honest – maybe a bit better on the slower setting. It seems like the rebound setting doesn’t do very much unless close to full slow. Is my rebound circuit broken or are you finding the same? I guess I need to try it on full slow to confirm it’s actually doing something.

How do you ensure you’re getting the same hands:feet weight distribution as the last time you tuned your fork?

Exactly my point, you can’t really. That’s why I don’t generally use front sag measurement to set pressure. I set pressure off maximum travel achieved during a ride and simply by how it feels. Once I’m happy with the pressure setting I just make a note of it and then set it by pressure, not sag measurement.

FWIW Specialized recommend setting front sag by rolling along slowly on the flat in your attack position, which makes sense to me as that’s how I generally ride most of the time. How is standing on your pedals going to be any more consistent than sitting in your attack position? Both are likely to vary a bit and it’s only of any value when initially setting air pressure for the first ever ride.

You can run a click or two of LSC to help with the brake dive. But I’m going to be honest im surprised you are feeling much dive with spring rate that High.

Yes, that’s the obvious anomaly from what the OP described. It cannot be both too stiffly sprung and at the same time blowing though loads of travel under braking.

FWIW Specialized recommend setting front sag by rolling along slowly on the flat in your attack position, which makes sense to me as that’s how I generally ride most of the time. How is standing on your pedals going to be any more consistent than sitting in your attack position? Both are likely to vary a bit and it’s only of any value when initially setting air pressure for the first ever ride.

Default attack position should be 100% weight through your feet, that was my point. The bars are constantly put through varied positive and negative loading as you ride but the neutral attack position should be heavy feet, light hands. I presume when you said “sitting” in your attack position you didn’t actually mean sitting?

chief – no I did actually mean sitting on the saddle but with weight quite forward. See vid below about halfway through.

As I said earlier, I take little notice of fork sag measurements and even less when comparing with other rider’s measurements as they vary massively depending on how you sit/stand on the bike. I can get anything from 10% to 25% fork sag just by moving my weight around a little on the bike. Rear sag is a lot more consistent, usually within a mm every time.

What really matters though is how much fork travel you are actually using out on the trail and how the fork feels while riding. Sag is just a by-product of this.

chief – no I did actually mean sitting on the saddle but with weight quite forward. See vid below about halfway through.

As I said earlier, I take little notice of fork sag measurements and even less when comparing with other rider’s measurements as they vary massively depending on how you sit/stand on the bike. I can get anything from 10% to 25% fork sag just by moving my weight around a little on the bike. Rear sag is a lot more consistent, usually within a mm every time.

That’s the weirdest and most illogical way of doing this. If you’re standing with your weight through your feet and hands as light as possible, in the attack position, then your weight is basically 100% through the bottom bracket. so the weight distribution between front and rear will be fixed (and will be simply the chainstay length / wheelbase for one end and front-centre length / wheelbase for the other). If you always do that then you will get consistent sag measurements – which will be more reliable and more useful for comparison than pump pressures.

I agree chief, might give that method a try and see if it’s more consistent than the sit and roll method. Also agree that comparing other people’s pump pressures is equally dodgy.

Not convinced about 100% weight acting directly through the BB though. You may have “light” hands but they must be supporting a significant weight in reality when in the position shown in your diagram. More so than if you just sat casually on the saddle in a fairly upright position (like the Spesh guy did in the video).

Anyway whatever you do it just needs to be consistent to be of any use.

I notice that most shock manufacturers recommend rear setup by measuring rear sag in precise mm of stroke, but fork manufacturers usually quote air pressures against rider weight and tend to talk about sag more vaguely. Probably a good reason for that.

tymbian –

sbs correct for bridalways etc

What advantages does this have?

That pic of the “attack” position is terrible, that might be an instantaneous position weighting the front wheel grip for an instant at the beginning of a turn, bike position is dynamic, it’s terrible that the attack position is sold as a thing, how’d it even happen?

Tymbian, i find the small bump very very good on the pikes, and its one of the reasons i was drawn to buying them. I had 150mm Revelations on the bike before and (despite being an ex suspension tech) I could never get them to feel exactly how i wanted, either blowing through the travel or no small bump. what i have noticed on the pikes, is after 6 months they could probably do with a lower leg service, and also bleeding out the air in the lowers. when i got my pikes i ran the reccomended pressures, and whilst the fork still felt good, experimenting and dropping the pressure/adding tokens really improved their performance IMO

I agree with Parkstar completely here.

160mm pikes on a reasonably slack fs bike.

I run ~75 PSI for ~85Kg rider weight. Gives me ~25% sag.

I think that’s a little under recommended pressure and I’ve got two tokens in to increase the ramp up at the end of the travel. I have the rebound set at about 6 down from fastest and normally between 4-7 clicks of lsc.

I find the Pikes have excellent small bump sensitivity and with a couple of tokens can equally take big hits without blowing out the travel.

I spent half a day specifically setting up the forks, riding the same short, varied section of DH. Set sag first based on pressure with rebound in the middle (10/20) and LSC at 0. Then play with the rebound over a few runs to fine tune it. Finally play with the LSC to find the sweet spot for what your riding. I ended up adding the two tokens 1 at a time over the next couple of weeks and found that really helped the top part of the travel.

I’d encourage anyone having set up issues to go back to basics, dedicate some time to getting them properly setup instead of just playing mid ride and I promise you will find them to be awesome :-).

That pic of the “attack” position is terrible, that might be an instantaneous position weighting the front wheel grip for an instant at the beginning of a turn, bike position is dynamic, it’s terrible that the attack position is sold as a thing, how’d it even happen?

The hips do need to be a few inches further back to be properly balanced. If every mountain biker started out riding BMX then there would be no need to teach the attack position. As it is, most don’t and many start on full sus bikes, where you can get away with sitting when descending. If you don’t know intuitively how much you need to move dynamically on a MTB then at least the attack position is a safe best compromise and encourages movement – unlike the much more upright DHer position you’ve recommended in the past, which for stiff, old, untalented riders is a bad place to default to.

I run ~75 PSI for ~85Kg rider weight. Gives me ~25% sag.

I think that’s a little under recommended pressure and I’ve got two tokens in to increase the ramp up at the end of the travel. I have the rebound set at about 6 down from fastest and normally between 4-7 clicks of lsc.

I think that’s a pretty normal setup for your weight. I’m a little bit surprised that you need 2 tokens with 160 mm travel, but perhaps you are taking reasonably big drops on your DH runs?

As it is, most don’t and many start on full sus bikes

Most people actually start on fully rigid kiddies bikes aged about 4. I didn’t ride a full susser until I was about 35. They didn’t really exist a decade or so earlier. Biking is one thing that nearly everybody does from an early age, so balance is largely intuitive. I don’t consciously adopt any specific riding position (you’d look like a robot if you did) and I’m on and off the saddle all the time when the going gets rough, on it at most other times.

In the name of science I’m going to try adopting several “poses” on the bike while measuring sag and see what variation I get front and rear. I’m betting the front sag will show the most variation.

For me I didn’t need the second token to stop the fork bottoming too easily but to get a spring curve that balanced with how the back of my Spitfire feels. With one token 25% fork sag felt great for cornering but too soft for jumping and 20% sag felt too short of cornering grip but jumped well. With two tokens, 25% sag and less rebound damping the bike corners and jumps really well.

If you want to get really geeky: Adding the bottomless tokens means you can run a bit less air pressure. If you’re running less air pressure you get better compliance and thus grip. If you have less air pressure then you need less rebound damping. If you have less rebound damping then once you get deeper into the travel where the spring rate has ramped up then you have quicker rebound. Fast rebound on the front is good for jumping because it keeps the front high and (unlike at the back) there’s no penalty on landing in terms of being bucked off.

For me I didn’t need the second token to stop the fork bottoming too easily but to get a spring curve that balanced with how the back of my Spitfire feels. With one token 25% fork sag felt great for cornering but too soft for jumping and 20% sag felt too short of cornering grip but jumped well. With two tokens, 25% sag and less rebound damping the bike corners and jumps really well.

Yes, +1

Excatly the journey i went through in my first couple of weeks on the pike.

The point with tokens is that they ramp up the spring rate progressively from mid-end of stroke. Very useful if you are jumping, so you don’t have to over-compensate with a higher spring rate (air pressure) over the entire stroke. But not really the same issue the OP was having.

Again how many tokens needed depends how big you are going on the jumps and the available fork travel. That’s why the factory defaults are 3 tokens on a 120 mm Pike, 2 tokens on a 140 mm, 1 token on a 150 mm and none on a 160 mm.

Not sure if you ever sorted out the issues, but we find that Pikes dont like running below about 75PSI. The transition from the LSC to the HSC is very harsh in those conditions, meaning the fork will only properly run on Open mode with little LSC. In order to get it working right I would suggest that you should have someone change the oil out for a much lighter grade, which will reduce the compression damping to a point where its workable with a light rider.

Sounds like a big faff I know, but it will transform the bike.

Probably way too late to chime in, but to the OP: your ‘pinging’ off rocks etc is definitely compression related (i.e. too much air in the fork) and possibly body position related. I’d address those two which might well alleviate your main issue. only then address rebound + LSC. keep it simple.

I would ask for peoples experiences with the Pike in riding down fast trails with braking bumps, ok, rebound is pretty critical but does LSC help or hinder in such situations?