After the usual good advice on here i now have my first coil shock on my Transition Sentinal v2 with Cascade Link. Cascade (and other sites) suggests that for my weigh i should be on a 500lb Spring.
Now my issue...
I can get a nice 30% sag reading with a minimal amount of preload set by spinning the collar with the bike stood on the ground. However, if i lift the bike off the ground by the saddle the spring becomes a little looser and requires a couple more turns of the collar to nip back up. With it in this position my sag is only around 25%
The bike feels good and not too bad to pedal (but not like a big soft DH mattress)
Conflicting advice on the net seems to be...
"25% sag is fine, don't worry too much about sag if you can bottom it out then all is good. Its more important to not have too much preload on the coil" or "you must get 30% sag or you will miss out on the wondrous small bump sensitivity"
I could just buy a 475lb spring for more sag but i don't then want to have to run too much preload in order to reduce the sag back to the desired 30%.
Thoughts??
take all slack out of the spring to shock at full extension(wind it to touch then one turn more iirc?) ie so it cannot move freely
check sag
if it's not too far out, ride it and see, if you feel rich experiment with a different spring
I’d agree with that ^
If the sag isn’t what you’d expect then that is only a vague suggestion that you may want to try a different spring rate. But ride it and see how it goes.
Have you ridden it on your regular trails yet? It might just work. If not, then start buying springs.
Ride it. There isn't really such a thing as The Correct Sag. I predict the bike will 'ride lower' than 25% sag.
Ive ridden it and it felt good but firm. As its my first coil i wasnt sure what to expect and i was pleasantly surprised how well ity pedalled. This was with the preload collar set when the bike was on the ground rather then when suspended in the air.
But it is correct to set the preload collar when the bike is suspended in the air isnt it? rather than on the ground?
take all slack out of the spring to shock at full extension(wind it to touch then one turn more iirc?) ie so it cannot move freely
This bit from the first reply is important. Not because you want to set preload with the bike in the air but because you never want the spring to be free to move when you are riding and the suspension tops out. If you then added a little more preload because you wanted it to ride a little higher that would be fine but note the shock/spring manufacturers warnings not to add too much preload.
Gotcha. Thanks.
Groovy. Also, don't be afraid to dial on low speed compression (if your shock has it?) with coil suspension. Being able to use LSC without impairing (desired) suspension action is one of the best things about coil IME. FWIW I typically run more LSC (and a smidge less rebound) on coil than I do with air shocks.
I'm pretty sure my Rockshox coil shock says you need a minimum of two full turns of preload from first touching.
As others have said, sag is a suggested starting point but not something to base your whole setup around. It sounds like you could try a lighter spring, a sprindex is also an option if you want to try a range of weights.
Preload doesn't really do that much and has virtually no influence on dynamic sag. Wind it on so that the spring can't rattle. On my EXT, they say no more that 2 full turns on the spring. That's not going to exert a great deal of difference on the spring.
As Benji points out, LSC will hold the shock up for you, and speeding up rebound will let it extend a bit quicker, and sit dynamically higher under use.
I've been running coil shocks on dh/enduro bikes for 20 years. In recent years I came to the conclusion it was better to set sag at 20-25% not 30%. A coil shock will eat up more travel on the lip of jumps and feel less poppy on the trail. The stiffer spring makes up for this effect but a coil with less sag will still track better than an air shock set to 30% sag.
aren't we missing the point that sag targets are specific to the frame? ie at the specified sag target, the suspension is designed to pedal best at this point? usually?
Yeah, there's no hard and fast rule. I was recently running a very light spring with arguably way too much sag but it felt amazing and ate up everything without any harsh bottom out. Coil will never feel like air and vice versa but you're always going to have to experiment with spring weight to see what suits you.