[Closed] Help me understand why - shorter travel felt better!

The shorter travel better suits the bike geometry and you became a 115mm riding god/goddess?

Went from 150mm forks to 130mm, feels so much better.

Bike is quite long with 160 forks so you will have shortened it a bit and a lot less slack so willing to move more.

Just think how amazing you'd ride with rigid forks

And the steeper head angle gives faster handling... Much more fun!

Yeah I'd put a rigid fork on and run 300psi in the shock for maximum enjoyment.

less travel to reduce the effects of you "working" the bike

I often did that when I ran Pikes - shorter travel makes the bike much quicker. On smooth singletrack, you can't beat dropping the forks to 110mm and going flat out. Gets a bit sketchy when you reach rockier stuff though.

The shorter travel better suits the bike geometry and you became a 115mm riding god/goddess?

Depens on the terrain you ride and how fast you want to ride it. I've gone the other way, from a short travel XC bike to a longer travel slacker bike. I ride terrain that is fairly steep and bumpy as well as groomed trail centres. I'm an order of magnitude quicker over the steeper bumpier stuff now - before I picked my way down, now I attack it and am looking for stuff to do little jumps off - a whole new world and great fun. On smooth groomed trail centres i'm slower than on my XC bike, but when on the descents i'm quicker and its more fun. For me its all about the fun. Also my body is expsed to less punishment now. Before after a long ride on a bumpy route, i'd have back ache, arms would be battered and i'd generally feel like i've been hammered. Now, though knackered i'm physically feeling better.

Bike geometry is a complex thing. Winding the fork up and down changes it quite a bit.

I recently had to put my Pikes on the GSpot (farewell Hustler) after taking the 66's off so I could at least pedal it around. I have since found that running 95mm travel is brilliant and the bike is exceptionally nimble in the ST. A downside though is that the Pikes blew seals and cartridges at the weekend.. 🙁

I'm still rocking circa 1995 63 mm Rock Shox Judys on a Bontrager Race - feels great, if dated.

All this slacker is better stuff is rubbish

Slacker is better for some things, not for others. Some bikes have an ideal angle, some do not.

Believe it not theres something pretty important that gets forgetten about, personal preference abd riding style.

It just does with some combos of forks on some bikes, esp. hardtails. My Sov feels really good at 130/135 but less good at 150mm.

edit: you know what CBA

change it up, you might like it.
change is as good as a rest

All my ex's reported a simmillar experience.

I'm confused about manually being easier, as your weight would have been further forward, and the bars lower - so should have been markedly harder to manual.

I'm actually confused on the physics of how it would be any different.

weight would have been further forward

relative to what, the front wheel axle, BB, rear wheel axle?

The bike.

Higher bars, shorter stem, saddle further back (on the same bike) would all unweight the front end, and make the bike easier to manual.

I'm confused about manually being easier, as your weight would have been further forward, and the bars lower - so should have been markedly harder to manual

But the push down on the bars might have lead to more force on the front wheel and therefore a better spring up

It was a dream?

think it was primarily because the sag was teh same so on the up stroke the bike left the ground quicker as it had 55mm less suspension to lift through