I’m fairly new to long travel full sus bikes having just bought myself a s/h Orange Five 29’er. It’s fitted with Fox front and rear which I have setup with 30% sag at both ends. Riding around my local trails I’ve noticed the rear shock uses a lot of its travel in general riding but yesterday I spent the day over at Surrey Hills and had a blast around and I was using all the travel front and rear. Most of the time I had the suspension in Descend mode and the O rings were pretty much at the end of the travel on both the fork and shock. I didn’t feel either end bottom out though so I this actually a good thing that I’m using all the travel?

With the shock using 2/3’rds travel on general riding, is this a soft mid stroke tune? Is this typical of the single pivot design on Orange bikes? Should I get a firmer mid stroke tune? The shock has the following tune;
Velocity Tune: M
Boast Valve Tune: 225
Rebound Tune: M
Which I assume is specific to Orange?

Cheers

From what I gather if your using all your travel and not bottoming out then it’s all good in da hood homey .

that all sounds more or less normal.

by all means, have a tinker if you want to. Try more or less pressure, see what it feels like, if you like it, or not.

but it doesn’t sound like you’re doing anything ‘wrong’. It sounds like you enjoyed yourself, so, er… crack on!

(30% sag sounds a bit more than i like, but that’s me, i’m a mincer)

To quote Brian Lopes, you’re hauling all that suspension up the hill, so you should be using it all at some point in a ride.

If you’re using it all and getting no harsh bottom out happy days.

Or you could move to a ccdb and get that bottomless feel. I did

Ummm I don’t think I’ve ever bottomed my CCDB out…maybe the tftuned tune is on the harsh side for me…or I ride like a pussy.. but I’ve never been concerned about the performance of the rear end..maybe I should run it with less pressure.

Cheers for the feedback 🙂 I was concerned that it was blowing through the travel to easily on normal riding but as it wasn’t bottoming out I assumed that was ok.

Will try a bit more pressure in there for BPW next week

If its plush and not bottoming out and felt good make a note of the pressure in case you lose your “sweet spot”.

I don’t subscribe to “you should use all your travel at least once a ride”, I subscribe to “you should use all your travel when you feel you should use it”.

Do you feel like the ride you did justified using full travel? If you do, you’re good.

Depends on the trail.

If I have my 160mm forks set up to use all their travel around somewhere fairly flat and tame like Swinley then I’ve set it wrong as far as I’m concerned as the bike will probably feel like a horrible spongey thing pitching fore and aft on pedalling and braking….I’d be wanting a firmer set up for that environment, maybe using half my available travel.

On the other hand riding down a nasty, steep rooty section of trail with bomb holes, head sized rocks etc I’d soften things up and get that 160mm of suspension working for me and smoothing things out.

I don’t subscribe to the theory of using all your travel on every trail, you’d ruin your handling on certain trails if you used all your travel….imagine setting your 160mm full suss to use all its travel for your tarmac commute to work!….it’d be awful pig of a thing to ride!

I would say that Surrey Hills is fairly aggressive trails with a real mixture of climbs/descents includiing bomb holes and jumps so a fairly good test of suspension. I think I have the forks roughly in the right place and for BPW next week I might take the sag down to 25% to give it a bit more support. The rear feels really good but it does blow through really quickly. However it didn’t bottom out so for BPW I will leave it as is at first and play with the sag from there.

I would say that Surrey Hills is fairly aggressive trails with a real mixture of climbs/descents includiing bomb holes and jumps so a fairly good test of suspension.

😆

Meh, if you’re not using all your travel on your harshest ride, you have too much travel!

EDIT: Or as mentioned before it’s not set up right

Ummm I don’t think I’ve ever bottomed my CCDB out..

That’s the beauty of it, it bottoms out but you don’t feel it, ride a nice big drop to flat then check the o ring position

I would say that Surrey Hills is fairly aggressive trails with a real mixture of climbs/descents includiing bomb holes and jumps so a fairly good test of suspension.

😆

Telegraph, that sorts the men from the boys.