Looking for some help with how to set up suspension, anyone know of somebody that provides a coaching type of service?

I know I could just keep fiddling with it myself but I’m looking for something time efficient and hopefully to learn a lot in one go.

Spendy

http://www.tftuned.com/mobile/tf-tuned-masterclass/p3115

That would actually be pretty good if I hadn’t just had my fork serviced! long term benefits for money saved on servicing…

There used to be a good section in the owners manual for the CCDB shocks, it was available online too.

Long story short:

Low speed compression is what happens when you pedal or ‘pump’ over something. More = less bobbing.

High speed compression is what happens when you hit something. More = harsher, but generally harder is faster as long as your in control.

Low speed rebound is what you set to stop the fork ‘clunking’ at top-out and the rebound that works whilst the wheels are on the ground (and therefore the rebound’s speed is limited anyway). It also works in combination with the low speed compression to stop the suspension oscillating whilst pedaling or over rolling bumps. More = better pedaling, but will make the bike feel ‘stuck to the ground’ because it’s lost that ‘pogo stick’ effect when you pre-load the suspension into jumps etc.

High speed rebound is what happens when you hit something big and the rebound has to deal with a lot of force from the spring, and when the suspension rebounds into thin air (like a big rock, or a jump). This want’s to be as fast as possible, without giving you the feeling of being bucked over the bars by the rear suspension. As a result it’s not often adjustable because there’s a fairly obvious ‘optimum’ and little benefit of anything else.

I might end up having to just tune it myself, but I’ve just become a double daddy so time is very limited for riding!

Shock is RP23 (pushed for Heckler, so feels much better than stock anyway)

Fork is Bos Deville. Again, feels awesome but I know I should be able to understand HOW it feels to adjust for trails/uplift days

Fanny About With It- but with purpose. Remember what you’ve changed, think about what happened, change one thing at a time and know how to get back to your last known good. Getting it wrong is essential- the tecnhical term is bracketing, you want to go too far in the right direction and often you want to go in the wrong direction too, deciding the perfect point is impossible in isolation so you set up your brackets of errors basically and narrow them down. This is FAWI but with a cleverer name.

Generally the better and posher the suspension the harder it is to understand… (mico/mico dh excepted). RP23 is pretty easy to set up if you’re not changing parts, you’ve only really got 2 settings and the damping control is pretty weak so you don’t have the huge choice of awful settings that a CCDB or similar gives.

What northwind said.

If 1 click makes a subtle difference, do 5, and re-run that rough bit of trail to see what happens, it’ll probably be worse, but in a different way. Now you know what that adjustment does go back 2 or 3 and see if it’s better/worse.

It’s not rocket science, forks especially are easy because you can feel what’s going on. Rear suspension adjustments are harder as (to me at least) it’s a case of identifying what it’s doing wrong (throwing me over the bars on jumps) rather than just feeling that the high speed rebound is a bit quick (which in a fork is something you’d feel as soon as you bounce them about a bit).

It really isn’t anywhere near as complicated as people like to make it sound.

I’ve come to the conclusion it’s because most are setting out for a mis-guided goal, plushness, rather than considering what it’s actually there for.

Suspension is there for grip (a handy perk of it is comfort).

Grip is proportional to how much vertical load is on the tyre, now off-road you have the issue that the ground is uneven, you need to somehow keep the tyre in contact with the ground, rather than being pinged up off of it, enter suspension.

Suspension helps with grip by keeping the tyre in contact with the ground, afterall, how are you going to load the tyre if it’s not in contact?

Remember what i said above about grip being proportional to the amount of load on the tyre? Well on a rigid bike with a rigid chassis, the bike is always the same shape and any little movement you make directly and immediately alters the load distribution between the front and rear tyres, you therefore have ultimate manipulation of grip. Introduce suspension, the chassis is no longer rigid, its shape is constantly changing, making it more difficult to understand and influence the weight distribution between the two wheel. Also since there is suspension to move, there’s a delay between shift in body weight and getting load to the right tyre at the right time.

I guess what i’m trying to say is your ultimate goal is grip, grip is proportional to load on they tyre, but the tyre needs to be in contact in the first place, suspension attempts to maintain contact, but compromises on chassis stability and weight distribution.

If you can feel the bump, it’s because you’ve got load on the tyre, the suspension is doing what it is meant to, it isn’t that it isn’t “plush enough”, it is only not plush enough if the wheel is skipping.

It is as simple as –
1. set the sag, as per manufacturers recommendation on the rear, I feel it’s good to have about 20% max sag on the front, helps preserve the geo on steep
2. set low speed rebound, you’re after something resembling “critical damping”, roll off a kerb slightly faster than walking pace, you want the rebound set fast enough that it extends back to the sag point quickly, but not so quick you extend past the sag point and then compress back past it again, this is setting chassis stability
3. you’ll normally have some form of low speed compression adjustment, this adjusts chassis stability, ie how much the shape of the bike changes and how quick you can load the tyres, dependant on fork or shock model, this may actually be doing next to nothing, what do you have?
4. Set your high speed stuff, have these adjustments?

PS, the manufacturers don’t actually don’t tend to give you that big of a range of adjustment on the compression circuits, so as long as you’ve got correct sag and rebound, you’re 99% there.

Cheers for all the replies. In principle I understand, I’ll have a play next time I’m out. The forks have a lot of adjustment so I can really f*&# up the settings to see what happens!

The TF course actually looks really interesting, it’d be easy to spend 350 quid on new parts which have little performance benefit and overlook how to get the most out of the stuff I have already. I’m also happy to service my own gear so would pay itself off after a while

Looked for youtube videos on suspension. This guy has a really interesting set of videos (if you’re into the tech stuff) including using a Go Pro to graph suspension performance!