I recently had my Fox 36 Van Rs serviced and when it came to set them back up, I realised that I was getting no where near the amount of recommended initial sag, 2.2 cms instead of 4. In the interests of experimentation, i thought that i would swap the coil out for a softer one, but now I'm in a little bit of a quandary.
I had the green coils in which is rated for use by riders 175 - 210 lbs therefore covering my weight. In order to get near the suggested 4 cms, I've ended up putting the purple coil in which is rated for use by riders weighing 115 - 155 lbs.
My question is this, which bit of information in the Fox manual do I work to? The suggested 4cms initial sag, or the rider weight that the springs are aimed at?
Advice / opinions / previous experiences would be appreciated. I'm going to go and ride on the forks tomorrow to see how they feel, but am concerned at this point that they'll just be bottoming out all the time.
Thanks
I'm about 180lbs and I used the purple spring when I had vanillas. I couldn't get anything like the right sag with the "correct" spring.
In an attempt to run a 'plusher' fork I went a bit undersprung in my Lyriks, bad idea, just packed down. Much happier with a firmer spring, and hands and arms don't hurt as much on longer downhills.
i gto firm springs in my lyriks and they can bottom out with full compression wound on. with the x firm spring i cant bottom them out with no compression set 🙁
The recommended sag @ 33% on those forks would be 53mm.
So the Purple spring would work much better for trail use in the UK.
In the Alps, you might need a firmer spring rate, closer to 40mm sag.
Average it out a 50mm sag and you'll get a good AM setting for UK use.
Thanks for the responses all. Will ride them and continue to experiment until I get the right feel I guess.