[Closed] Compression damping adjust - what's it for?

surely you want the forks to compress as fast as possible when they're required to?

Err, no. They need to compress at the correct rate for your weight and a couple of other factors. If it's too fast they'll dive too much and feel terrible in corners

Think 50s Americal cars with sloppy undamped suspension 🙂

that's not having damping at all, but I think rebound damping alone would solve that issue. Compress fast, rebound slower and absorb the energy that has gone into compressing the spring

I tend to agree with you. Its probably only low speed compressin adjust so basically dive on the brakes and compressions. I run forks with minimal compression damping - always have. I like them to be very reactive to bumps and supple

Tips - locos site has a good basic guide.

Its a lot of personal preference but I would go with the minimum you can have

but I think rebound damping alone would solve that issue

And you would be wrong. Then you would just get a fast dive and a slow rebound. Stack a few bumps together and the fork will pack down as a result. You gotta have controlled compression, even if it's not adjustable! 🙂

I run forks with minimal compression damping - always have

Correct. Run with as little as you can get away with, but you still have compression damping, even the spring rate itself will provide a form of damping 🙂

Compression damping is a way of changing the effective spring stiffness depending on the speed of movement of the fork. If you have, say 100mm travel on your fork, you ideally want that 100mm to be just used fully whenever you hit a bump over 100mm high - eg so that the fork doesn't bottom out harshly.

Compression damping allows you to use a softer spring (so you retain good small bump compliance and sag) which is then effectively stiffened up by the compression damping which is speed related (eg hit something faster/harder, the spring is effectively stiffer). As above, you want to use as little comp damping but enough to avoid harsh bottoming.

So, if for example your riding had lots of steps/drops, you may well use more compression damping to avoid bottoming out on those rather than just fitting a harder spring which would make everything harsher.

it has no effect at all on the effective spring rate.

http://locotuning.co.uk/tech-info.html

Have read, any further issues feel free to mail me 😀

it has no effect at all on the effective spring rate

Correct. Neither does preload.

LoCo, please explain:

that would require the wheel to move quickly upwards to negotiate smoothly, then increase the high speed compression

Surely if you want faster suspension movement, you need less high speed compression, not more? Incresing the compression would cause it to kick back at you, no?

🙂

We might be talking at crossed purposes but it effectively alters how much force the fork takes to move a fixed distance at a particular moment in time - eg the [b]instantaneous[/b] effective spring rate of the whole fork (not just the spring itself) - I'm not suggesting that it changes the spring rate of the spring since clearly it doesn't and in fact that's the whole point of using compression damping rather than just fitting a stiffer spring.

Or to put it another way, it affects how hard the fork resists an impact depending on how fast the fork is moving.

TandemJeremy - Member
I tend to agree with you. Its probably only low speed compressin adjust

I would guess by the name of the forks it has LSC and HSC.

44 Ti RC3s

Peter, wording really, edited to be clearer, the associated issues are dealt in the Problem solver section further down the page, cheers for the proof read, the aim was to make it a simple as possible when it was written as the majority of people just want the basics and not get baffled with tech jargon 😀

As with all these techy threads I would happily write a decent essay in answer, however work commitments preclude this and the subsequent responces (arguements 😉 ) could easily take a day or to to wade though/compose

ooooohhhh! I just found a yellow knob at the bottom of my RC3 55's, wonder what thats for then

nobody knows, I tried it once though, made me go well fast like a rocket!