I’ve been having trouble getting my new (130mm 29er RCT3) Pikes set up and I think my issue is with the high speed compression damping. I’ve got it set up pretty soft. Soft enough that I can get full travel just by bouncing it about in the garden. However, if I smack it through a rocky or rooty section at speed it seems pretty harsh and never seems to use that last inch of travel no matter how hard I try.

I know that you can’t adjust high speed compression damping yourself, but is it affected by any of the other things that you can change (tokens, LSC, rebound) ?

How much LSC are you using? And when you say ‘soft’ what psi, sag and what is your riding weight?

Pretty much no LSC (maybe 2 clicks from fully open). Running around 30% sag (which is 50psi at my weight – around 170lb). As I say, I can use all the travel just by bouncing it aggressively in the car park, but never use that last inch on the trails.

Oh … and how many bottomless tokens fitted?

I’ve not opened the fork up yet, but it’s a 130mm 29er so should have two fitted from the factory. Rebound is set pretty slow, by the way. Around one third of the way from fully closed.

You can pump very hard on a car-park test so it partly depends on how aggressive the trail is and how hard you ride it. It may be the fork is still bedding in if new (although they are usually pretty good out of the box) but if you continue to not ever use full travel then try removing one of the tokens. I think you are also using too much rebound damping. Try one third to a half from fully open.

I think that some of the harshness through rocky sections at speed may be down to the amount of rebound damping you have been using, not giving the fork enough chance to recover between the rapid hits.

I’d set the rebound one third from fastest and see how it is.

Does sound like an odd one though.

What was you’re starting point to see how the suspension felt ? Have you tried a ride with say 30% sag and all suspension dials at 50% ? On forks and shock.

I get on OK with my 29er ones but I found the 26ers a bit overdamped, I was planning to change for lighter oil but sold them on. I’m pretty light, 10 stone, so maybe just on the edge of their envelope?

I’ve been having issues with this. Also with rebound spiking at speed.

Spoke to TF Tuned last week about it. The long and the short is that there’s too little high speed rebound damping (shimmed), so you end up trying to control it using the low speed rebound (adjuster). This also can affect compression comfort as it struggles to flow enough oil on the rebound return circuit(the guy on the phone didn’t explain it very well, but it isn’t a packing down issue).

Anyway, my forks are being collected tomorrow for a service, and they’re going to reshim the damper for my weight & riding style while they’re in there. Hurrah…

LOL – crosspost with Northwind. My forks are actually his old ones…

Firstly I’d try another token in the air system and reduce the pressure a bit.
Would set the low speed about 5 clicks from fully off once correct sag found.

If you’re still not happy, a tune on the Charger damper will improve performance, as always we can do this 😉

Thanks folks,

I should have pointed out that I started off with all the dials in the middle (as I always do with new forks) and experimented with less rebound damping (about a third from fully open, which is what I found worked best with my 26″ Pikes), but more rebound damping (and hardly any compression damping) seems to work better with these.

I’ll keep playing with them and when I’ve stuffed them up completely I’ll send them to you, Simon 🙂