Coil Conversion for the Pike

Just finished fitting mine in the Pikes today.

Decided to have a bit of a maintenance day, cold, wet and windy outside.

Have only managed to have a quick ride on the road to bounce up and down on the forks.
Will have to get out later in the week to test properly.

Took my time, sometimes I scratched my head, but I’m sure I have fitted it correctly.
Mine came with a white plastic spacer, I have put this on top of the coil. My forks are set at 140mm , the installation images on the net don’t show this though.

An extra spacer as well as the one that sits in the air cap? Interesting, might just be a preload spacer for you?

After a day of uplift I am very happy with my coil, thanks Tom_W1987 for kicking this whole thing off 🙂

Glad it worked out well for you RB!

In the spring I’ll be ordering an Ohlins coil and I’d like to look at getting a company to knock me up a dual rate spring (main spring, plus secondary spring for either bottom out or ride height – plus a cross over ring to control the point at which the secondary spring kicks in)… for my next round of stupidty….need to do a bit more research though.

Any thoughts on the conversion RB?

I’m keen to ascertain whether I’m as nuts/deluded as a hi-fi enthusiast etc

2nd ride on mine today. Still a big thumbs up. Interestingly I’m actually getting more travel out of them than when I was running air, but they still feel far better supporting/less wallowy.

Still making a slight noise, but as I haven’t bothered doing anything about it then that’s not a surprise

Yeah, thats me experience. I was expecting to use a bit more travel and I mentioned it in the review, the more progressive you run your fork the more you have to drop the psi to achieve the same sag which seems to worsen midstroke support.

More blow off in rock gardens has meant a smoother ride – yet the fork is still more supportive in berms and steep tech. The FAST dampers high speed adjuster is really effective as well….so im able to dial out the odd bottom out harshness.

Any thoughts on the conversion RB?

I hesitate to give my opinion due to my general ignorance but..

I used to like my Pikes. They came on my first long travel bike with a Rock Shox shock at the back. It all worked well together at the modest speeds I travel and all the magazine reviews were full of praise so why would I want anything else, everything was great.

Then I bought a new frame. Longer, lower, slacker you get the picture 🙂 It came with a CCDB inline (I know, but I’ve had no trouble yet and it feels great). I swapped all the parts from my old bike including the Pike. Only now the Pike didn’t seem so good. The action in the first half of the travel felt too restricted, not free moving enough is how I would describe it. If I reduced the air pressure or low speed compression it was a little better but I had too much dive so had to go back. I don’t know if it was that the new bikes rear set up was better so the Pike suffered by comparison or the super slack angles were increasing friction in the fork but it was nagging at me that something needed changing. But I didn’t know what.

Then I saw this thread and got interested. A coil spring sounded good, a linear rate suits me (so long as it doesn’t bottom too much too hard) and doing away with those air seals has got to reduce friction right? So here I am with the coil conversion. It feels far better in the first half of the forks travel, the suspension moves so freely without diving or resorting to more compression damping than I’d like. I have no idea about the action in the second half of the travel since my brain at these times is too busy with other things. I haven’t bottomed the fork in my one damp day of riding so will see how that goes as summer dries the trails.

I am really happy with this conversion. I still have the standard charger damper so maybe there are further improvements to be had but…. for a rider of my limited talent… I think the coil alone has given me what I wanted.

^ that was a bit more of a ramble than I intended 😯

TLDR? The short version is 😀 😀 😀

main spring, plus secondary spring for either bottom out or ride height – plus a cross over ring to control the point at which the secondary spring kicks in)… for my next round of stupidty….need to do a bit more research though.

Have you thought about a custom wound spring with progression built in?

Do those actually work though, for example dual rate springs don’t actually work unless the softer spring is so soft it totally binds before the harder spring can be compressed. To get a true dual rate setup you need a cross over nut to stop the two rates combining as one rate.

http://shocktherapyst.com/the-truth-about-dual-rate-springs/

I haven’t done enough research yet and perhaps I’m being thick, but I don’t see why progressive springs would be any different?

Well they do work in so far as they give a rising rate as the closer coils bind. But having scanned through your link maybe they don’t do what you want which appears to be two spring rates?

I’ve been following this thread with interest for a while, certainly as an upgrade to my 2017 Lyrik RC DPA.

I can set it up with 3 tokens to get a nice initial stroke, but it doesn’t feel as supportive as I’d like, or I can remove a token, run higher pressures to get what feels like more mid support, yet it becomes harsh and a bit reluctant to move through the travel on choppy washboard type stuff. Instead of the wheel tracking the ground it feels as if it is skipping.

What I don’t know is if I am confusing what I think is mid stroke support with actually a too high spring rate (which a coil wouldn’t fix as I understand it’s inherently higher after the sag point compared to air), or if it’s an issue with the RC charger damper and it’s poor HSC tune (relative to an RCT3), or a friction issue because of the many seals in the dual position air spring assembly (which a coil would fix)

~72 kg, 105 PSI 20% sag (2 tokens) or 90 PSI 20% sag (3 tokens)

Any tips welcomed

Just been out today for the first ride on the bike with the coil fitted.

Sag measurement is about 25% which is just about where I would set up the air spring.

Small bump performance is noticeable better, didn’t feel that great today though, so I’ll have to reserve my final judgement for the future. Almost certain that it will be favourable, the support in the mid stroke, as others have mentioned, is much firmer and doesn’t blow through the travel as easily.

I’d say the buggest issue is that youre running even more seals with the DPA fork, Icantride.

I think a coil would fix the issues you describe, when you go to a more linear setup – how much sag do you run?

Anyway im 12 stone 5lb and I moved from 21 percent sag on air and two tokens (1 token when I moved to a FAST cartridge) to 21 percent sag on a coil and havent noticed increased harshness on braking bumps etc, so the increased midstroke support hasnt harshened the fork further.

If anything because the fork is livlier in the upper part of the travel, its rebounding bsck and staying in a softer parts of its travel better on the braking bumps. You can feel the somewhat increased playfulness everywhere as well…

If you want the same bottom out resistance with the coil ho with a lottle less sag than you tun with air….if you want to use a little more….like I did…run the same. Either way you’ll get better small bump tracking I reckon.

Tom where are you based? I also have the FAST damper upgrade and after yesterday’s arm pump fiasco at BPW I’m keen to get a coil spring in mine, the small bump sensitivity of the air springs is dreadful!

I definitely think the extra seals are playing a big part in it. It’s a new bike (Slash 29), only 5 rides old so I’m yet to go token-less and try out that extreme. I’m working on sorting the rear too.

What I want is something that is supportive yet active/supple, if that’s not an oxymoron/impossibility in the world of suspension. To my mind the support comes from the spring rate, the suppleness comes from the damper and friction from seals (or lack of)

How much did you play with the balance of the LSC/HSS at BPW chilled? I found that getting the balance right in terms of support vs comfort for all day lift assisted riding was pretty critical with the FAST damper – but it’s also the highlight of the fork – being able to find your happy medium, on shorter days I run it a lot stiffer (and it’s more of a race tune in the first place) than longer days.

At Antur I dropped to 4 clicks of HSC from 7 from fully open, and upped the LSC from 10 to 12 clicks from fully open. I found that LSC barely affected feedback and that actually increasing it seemed to cause the high speed circuits to blow off more easily – as I assume the fork was forcing more oil through the high speed circuits. That could easily be in my head though.

That’s the nice thing about the FAST cartidge, anywhere between 4 and 11 clicks of HSC works for me – but for different types of riding. Chicksands feels nice running 10 and seems to make jumping a bit more fun/less hairy.

I ride around Sheffield now but based in London, will be up there in a couple of weeks if you are near by and want to meet up. My ankle is still pretty shagged though, so I probably won’t be keeping up with anyone.

What I want is something that is supportive yet active/supple, if that’s not an oxymoron/impossibility in the world of suspension. To my mind the support comes from the spring rate, the suppleness comes from the damper and friction from seals (or lack of)

In reality support comes from both, in WRC I’ve read that suspension setup has moved on from the time when the spring supported suspension through it’s stroke to the point that it simply holds the car at sag point and the damping does most of the work. I’m not sure that’s the case with the MTB world, or whether I was reading bullshit – I’m not sure MTB suspension could package that level of engineering into such small volumes either. But my feeling is that going to a coil effects midstroke support and suppleness more, my FAST damper improved the performance on and reactivity to deeper repetitive hits more. My setup currently feels like it’s a little way to what is described by some WRC tech heads – the coil and damping are holding the fork up in the midstroke, yet the damping blows off pretty nicealy at high speed and the linear coil accentuates this and I can alter how much travel the fork uses a bit, by simply tweaking the HSC setting.

However all suspension is a compromise, for now anyway….maybe in 20 years they won’t be. It’s about finding the trade off that suits you as an individual, instead of taking what mags say on face value.

I’d like to add something to my final point as well, magazines and the bike industry have been encouraging people to move to more basic adjustments (eg three position compression) etc – when clearly there are a lot of people who aren’t quite happy with their setups and are resorting to fairly pricey aftermarket upgrades. This was done in the name of simplicity, I’ve even seen forks being marked down for having too many adjustments (looking at you NSMB).

When what the industry should have been doing is keeping the adjustments, letting people have the choice – and get this….properly educating them on how to set up suspension – the amount of people that just twiddle with suspension boggles my mind. You have to go out, for at LEAST one full day, with the sole intention of setting up your suspension by repeating a piece of varied track over and over again. Even if the idea bores you to death, you need to take a notepad with you, note your base settings and then use the bracketing method to home in on your standard setup.

This is great even if you aren’t a particularly experienced rider, why? Because it gets you in tune with your bike, you learn about how you ride and how your bike handles by making noticable changes to it and having to ride around the perhaps odd way that your new setting rides. It makes you think about what you are doing with your bike and your body more.

I improve my riding the most when I’m sodding about with the suspension fairly seriously, not because the bike is suddenly making me ride faster – but the whole process makes me think about how I’m riding the bike! Go to extremes with your bike, try full fast and full slow on the rebound…for the lolz…see how it feels….then bracket inwards.

Hi Tom, yeh I was fiddling with the compression but ended up winding it pretty much off in an effort to get the fork more supple.

I’ve come home now and realised I probably need to run a lot less pressure in the air spring and have had a play with lower pressures… doh!

All good fun though. I really want more small bump sensitivity and that’s something I don’t think an air spring can give me without enough mid stroke support.

I’ve emailed Richard at CRCONCEPTION and he emailed back saying use the online order form… but it’s all in French and I can’t make head nor tail of it lol.

I’ll have to sit with Google translate and have a look a it.

Just email him in English your riding weight, your fork model eg wheel size and length and your rough desired sag – thats what the rest of us did i think and then he sent us a paypal link.

Think both myself and R_B used the order form as requested. You can work out what most of it is, lots of the boxes have English comments attached if you hover over them. Failing that, Google will sort you out

Think he’s getting fed up with emails hence sending me the order form

I used the spreadsheet, as legend says there are comments in English (and other languages) if you hover. Some of the entries were maybe a little unclear in translation but mostly I thought fairly easy to work out what was required. I included a few comments in my covering email just to make sure I hadn’t misunderstood.

After yesterday’s ride I perhaps began over thinking this, but here goes.

The small bump sensitivity is much better, no question, the static sag is spot on.

Next ride out, thinking about slowing the rebound down a tad. This is mainly due to how the coil seems to be much more controlled and I’m not getting that close to the full travel.

Any thoughts?

Someone with more idea will hopefully answer but

thinking about slowing the rebound down a tad

No harm in that, turn it down until you go too far then come back to where it feels right Hang on, I misread that. Why slow the rebound unless you have a symptom of too fast rebound?

not getting that close to the full travel

Have you been riding terrain/in a manner where you would expect to be approaching full travel? If so, do you have too much compression damping? Currently I have reduced low speed compression from what I was using with the air spring (caveat: I’m far from expert and I’ve had only one wet day out on it so far) I have about 22mm of sag and only used approx 135mm of travel so about 25mm unused but I expect that margin to diminish in drier conditions when I’m not feeling so chicken 🙂

Thanks rubber buccaneer.

Food for thought there.

Will experiment next time out.

Some say you should be getting full travel every ride but I don’t agree with that, especially when you have 160mm of travel. I’d have to turn my forks into a right wallowy mess for some of my ‘Extreme Canal Tow Path’ riding 🙂

apologies, I said I had 22mm of sag but I meant 35mm (22%)

I have a set of Lyriks which I converted to coils using a crconception kit, I’ve actually decided to go back to air, a lot has to do with the fact my lyriks are a bit creaky in the uppers and will probably get warrantied at some point (be a bit tricky with a coil in there) and also I’m actually quite happy with the air shock on the Lyrik.

Anyhow, the upshot of this is that I now have a coil kit to get rid of so if anyone is interested in getting a kit cheap let me know, the kit is for a 160mm lyrik I’m sure it will be fine in the pike, the only thing I can see different to Richards instructional pics is that it has a white spacer under the air cap rather than an insert.

My weight is around 12.3 stone, which with the kit gave me approx 23-25% sag.
The only thing you may need is a fresh sheet of acetate to go inside the stantion although the existing one could most likely be used again.

Any of the upgrade options out there that work with the Dual Position Pike?

Do you mean you want to keep the ability to lower the travel? If so, no there’s not a coil kit that will currently do that

You could try to mod a Lyrik Coil U-turn spring. I converted a set of U-turn Dual Air Revs to U-turn coil using U-turn coil bits from an old set of Psylo SL’s.

Only did it after I accidentally put a tiny scratch in the air tube.

As others have pointed out, try torquing the top caps up more to get tid of creaks in Pikes and Lyriks.

You dont want to needlessly slow the rebound down, you want it to stay higher in its travel and not pack down into its deep stroke brcause this means the fork is staying in the softer parts of its travel. Only slow it down to the point where the front isnt fighting you in rock gardens, pushing you out wide in berms or giving you a bucking sensation.

I use a bit more travel on single hard impacts, not much over a two spacer air setup. But in tock gardens I actually use less – despite the fork feeling more compliant – I can only assume the fork is reacting quicker and riding higher due to less seals and more midstroke support.

Be methodical with setup as well, try full slow and full fast rebound and move inwards, trying a click or two in from open and closed in an alternating fashion. Do this on a single track/section and note down what you notice about each setting.

Ta

Travo if you’re sure it will fit I’m keen. Will pm you

I assume, given the free length of the spring, that it doesn’t get close to coil bound. So, in theory, could I order a 140mm kit for ,160mm pike and put a 20mm spacer on top of the spring? Then, if I want to shorten the travel, move the spacer to the spring rod? Pretty much like the original Fox vanilla forks?

The theory there is probably sound, just so happen to have been reminding myself of how to lower an old set of Fox 125s the other day. No idea about the spring length part of the assumption though.

I do think you’d struggle to use the same spacer when you switch the travel though, as there’s not much room to make sure you hit the negative spring

This is all purely speculative as I’m in the process of selecting a new frame, but an Airdrop Edit with cc coil IL is in the lead right now. Feels better with a 150 fork though.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Super Alloy Racing ‘PSP’ coil conversion, apparently a press release will be out tomorrow, but release date likely not until spring, not sure I’ll wait that long, I have a few more token variations to try and see if I can find what I’m after before I bite the coil bullet.
The hydraulic bottom out does sound interesting, but is likely to add more cost over a CRC conversion. Does the CRC kit have anything in the way of bottom out protection?