It’s on my forks RS sektor solo air!
Never use it and why would I?
Do you use yours and why?

basically the spring changes how hard the fork is, the compression damper adjusts how fast it can squish.

Use it to get rid of brake dive, bobbing etc. Fork will work fine without it, on a normal trail bike it’s just for fine tuning really.

Trails near me are fairly smooth, but very twisty and quite often bermed, so i use about a quarter turn of the dial to stop them going squidge-bounce every time the trail turns sharply

low speed – for combatting brake dive etc

High speed – how quickly a fork responds to square edge hits – how quickly it moves up over a short distance

cruzheckler – Member

low speed – for combatting brake dive etc

High speed – how quickly a fork responds to square edge hits – how quickly it moves up over a short distance

Yes, that’s totally correct, but you can’t adjust high speed on motion control rockshox which the OP has.

They do have 2 circuits, the main/low speed one is controlled by the blue dial, the other (high speed) is fixed to give almost no damping at all. The point at which the low speed switches to the high speed is set with the floodgate (gold dial if you have it).

I use it on my RC41’s to counter brake dive (as stated above). Got my shock pushed xmas time and combined the front/rear is nicely balanced. If you have a hardtail then I’d say its less noticable as the ‘virtual’ geometry changes less.

explanation could be late night brain rubbish though 🙂

!

I have an RS Sektor Solo Air on my SC Butcher….it is very similar to a Pike, it does NOT have 2 compression circuits (hi & lo speed)
This is something the Pike suffered with which wa remedied with a PUSH upgrade, I hear it is coming to the Sektor shortly!
Sektor is still great for the money though!

Think you’re taking about rebound there not compression

So back to the op,
Are the people of STW saying that the motion control is pap on the Sektor solo air forks?
And hopefully there is some sort of internal upgrade coming ?

Are the people of STW saying that the motion control is pap on the Sektor solo air forks?

No, not at all. The comp damper is a good one, allowing more than enough room for tuning on a normal trail bike, but it would not be sufficient to race top level downhill on.
The rebound damper is basic, but it works. This is what people are talking about upgrading.

And hopefully there is some sort of internal upgrade coming ?

No idea about the availability of the Push upgrade mentioned above, but I think BadlyWiredDog has put in the DualFlow rebound damper (from more expensive rockshox forks), and apparently it works well. The stock one is alright though.

You might want to consider the upgrade if you find that have the fork working well at high (bike) speeds means that it feels choppy at low (bike) speeds.

Doesn’t do much for brake dive for me, never understood that. EDITED: unless it’s on the thrutchy technical stuff I mention below.. so ignore this bit 🙂

It’s to stop the fork blowing through all its travel quickly. If you had no compression damping and you hit a 120mm bump, then you’d bottom out the fork immediately – leaving you with no suspension and a very funny head angle and hence a weird handling bike. If you just pumped up the fork harder to avoid that then you’d have a very hard fork which would not work well on smaller stuff. Compression damping slows down the travel so if you hit a big thing you can still continue to ride and hit more big things. The down-side is that more of the bump gets transmitted to your handlebars.

If you wanted a super smooth ride, say you were designing a 1950s Cadillac, you would have not much compression damping so that the suspension would respond really well to small bumps and iron them out. The downside would then be a really wallowy ride.

It also helps when landing from jumps. Spreads the impact out over a bit more time.

For your own bike – if you do jumps, hit big rocks and do technical rocky bits, then I think more compression damping would help. If you just to fast smoother stuff, then you could get away with less. You have to find a difficult bit of terrain and test it out – a carpark test won’t reveal anything.

Dual flow Blackbox rebound damper assemblies are due into the country the start of next month and in conjunction with a ‘tweak’ of the MoCo damping can get the forks working rather nicely.

Have a look at the compression setup and glossary on my guide:

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

To summarise…

springs (be they air or coil) are position sensitive – eg for a given amount of travel, they push back with a fixed force.

For damping, it’s speed sensitive. If you compress the fork very slowly then they will provide near zero resistance to movement but if you compress them fast, they will or can provide lots of damping. Too much and you get ‘spiking’ where you effectively lock the fork out.

The point of compression damping is to allow the fork to absorb different impacts differently.

Having Low speed and high speed circuits allow you to tune the speed sensitive damping better – low speed for honking out of the saddle/pedalling, high speed for big impacts.

compression damping is also very useful for avoiding packing down on repetetive hits. For instance, alpine braking bumps, if you have no compression damping the first 2 will be super soft but the ones after that will just go straight into your arms. compression damping on, and the first 2 will have more of an impact on the bars, but the others should have a similar effect as well

could you not do teh dh mod on teh flood gate that some lyrik users have done to increase oil flow round the damper? Remove the bottom cover off the damper rod end

I’ve the same forks on my Pitch.

As a general rule I put about 3 clicks of compression damping on to ballance out the pro-pedal when going allong trails, running the fork and shock fully open, propedal off respectively makes the bike completely different, very comfortable, but not very fast.

Plan for next winter when they need a service is to get both ends pushed I think, the PR2 could do with some pro pedal/low speed damping in the open position IMO and I’d get the fork done to ballance it out.

Are the people of STW saying that the motion control is pap on the Sektor solo air forks?
And hopefully there is some sort of internal upgrade coming ?

If you dont know how to use the original one, and can’t tell whats wrong with it then you probably don’t need the upgrade, all it’ll give you is a sticker on the forks and a load of marketing buzz words to talk about in the car park. Firtly figure out what each of the current settings does, then make an informed decision once you’ve reached the current forks limitations (either in adjustments or outright ability) about what to spend the money on, because £120+ is an expensive sticker for your forks if you could be just as fast with the stock bits adjusted properly.

lab – Member

compression damping is also very useful for avoiding packing down on repetetive hits. For instance, alpine braking bumps, if you have no compression damping the first 2 will be super soft but the ones after that will just go straight into your arms. compression damping on, and the first 2 will have more of an impact on the bars, but the others should have a similar effect as well

Thats too much rebound causing packing down.

Compression damping is not there to disguise other faults with set up – too soft a spring, too much rebound. its there to stop dive , bob and other similar symptoms. Its only low speed compression damping on most forks.

Get the spring rate right and you don’t need a lot of compression dampng for trail riding. You lose a lot of compliance if you put a lot of low speed compression on.

Sory TJ, disagree with you there.

Being over sprung/under damped or under sprung and over damped are a matter of personal preferance, plenty of forks/shocks work better with a not quite ideal spring rate, just look at the different values MOJO/TF calculators give you based on the tuners preferances for more/less/different types of damping.

For years MTB’ers ran really hard springs, then Sam Hill came along and we went back to running really soft springs with lots of damping which for years was the accepted best practice in motorcross and obviously worked for him. It’s personal preferance.

Personaly I run my shocks/forks pretty softly sprung with more compression damping than most people, it works for me.

whilst rebound damping is also contributary to packing down, I wouldn’t call that a fault with the setup. Bikes have to be set up to hit a variety of obsticals, whilst no rebound damping is great for stammer bumps, overshoot a large jump or hit a drop to flat and you’ll get bucked clean off the bike.

slower rebound is a joy on a bike, I’ll happily take the slight compromise on slower compression to get it. That said, a decent damper with high and low speed compression\rebound solves the problem. compression damping is only a real issue on cheap dampers without speed sensitive damping/blowoff circuit, which leads to spiking on big hits but a lot of them (ie maz 55s) can be modded to shim stacks (thus giving a much better adjustability than almost any stock forks)

Thats too much rebound causing packing down.

I would say the RATIO between compression and rebound would cause packing down, with the absolute values determining on which terrain it happens. So yes, too much rebound, or not enough compression.

Agreed you don’t need much for general trail riding but many of us will be hitting jumps or severely rocky bits, where it becomes important.

The reason of the op was I’ve just had the rear pushed (pitch pro)which is awesome and was just wondering if anything could be done to the front.
After reading thro some of the comments I think I’m gonna run slightly less air and try 2 clicks on the Motion control.
Natural terrain, rocks and popping of any lip I can see is how I ride!
And am I right in thinking for trailcentres pro pedal ON and a bit more MC?

Some good explanations there. Ta

I use low speed compression to combat pedal bob, brake dive, bottom out railing turns and to stop me head angle getting too steep on steep stuff, it helps the forks sit higher on steeper stuff.

If you’re the sort of rider that just simply rides around, 99% in the saddle, not concentrating on working the bike, just pedalling around, you won’t need to touch it.

If you’re the kind of rider that gets out of the saddle, mashes the pedals, rides steep stuff and nails turns, you should have a play.

They do have 2 circuits, the main/low speed one is controlled by the blue dial, the other (high speed) is fixed to give almost no damping at all. The point at which the low speed switches to the high speed is set with the floodgate (gold dial if you have it).

Err, I thought the floodgate adjustment adjusted the force required to break the lockout threshold when the fork was locked out? As far as I know it has nothing to do with anything when the fork isn’t locked out.

bigjim – Member
Err, I thought the floodgate adjustment adjusted the force required to break the lockout threshold when the fork was locked out? As far as I know it has nothing to do with anything when the fork isn’t locked out.

😆 Let’s not go there again. In my very humble opinion, it does. 🙂

deanfbm – Member

I use low speed compression to combat pedal bob, brake dive, bottom out railing turns and to stop me head angle getting too steep on steep stuff, it helps the forks sit higher on steeper stuff.

Exactly why I use it too.

retro83 – care to explain?

Motion control and blackbox motion control, side by side.

The black box motion control has the addition of a shim stack, behind the entry port, for high speed compression damping. This is something a regular Moco does not have, the regular moco has nothing other than the entry port to control oil flow, thus damping. Unless I am very much mistaken and there is no form of shim stack behind he entry port on a moco.

Unless when pressure builds up behind the port cover, the port cover blows open on a big hit allowing high speed oil flow through all 3 ports rather that the one port available for low speed. i am only supposing though. In this case, lower gate would aid high speed, higher gate would fight high speed, in comes the high speed compression adjust from the gate.

Come jump in suspension buffs.

Let’s not go there again. In my very humble opinion, it does

Can you provide any kind of link or documentation from rockshox or any reputable source for this? it would seem a bit of an oversight on rockshox part not to have noticed this feature on their forks.

what about mission control?

bigjim – there are some versions that can be put on in stages and retro is referring to these I think. so the lockout bit is not just an on / off.

However there is clearly a lot of confusion around this. the three forks I have all only have poplock on or off and one has adjustment as to how easy the floodgate opens

deanfbm – Member

retro83 – care to explain?

bigjim – Member
Can you provide any kind of link or documentation from rockshox or any reputable source for this? it would seem a bit of an oversight on rockshox part not to have noticed this feature on their forks.

No, not really. It’s been discussed on here ad nauseum and usually ends in a ruck. For that reason I’m out.

deanfbm – you’re right no shim stack – hence why i said once the gate is open there is virtually no damping. Have a search for Kapusta or Bad Mechanic on MTBR, it has been explained very thoroughly.

Simple test, put compression dial to 60% with Floodgate set fully clockwise and ride into a root or kerb = very harsh fork.

Turn floodgate fully anti-clockwise = compression damping bypassed = very soft fork.

TandemJeremy – Member

bigjim – there are some versions that can be put on in stages and retro is referring to these I think. so the lockout bit is not just an on / off.

Quite, thanks.

OK well I’ll have a search, I have revs with adjustable floodgate and adjustable moco compression damping, so I’m interested to see if there is anything in this. Just seems odd that RS don’t mention this highly useful feature?!

anyone done the Damper mod?

Just spoke to tftuned and they didn’t recommend it

retro83 – Had a butchers at those threads, all completely reasonable to me, it also explains the shape of the swiss cheese plastic tube, which i have been scratching my head over for a while.

I’m in agreement with you, gate does alter when the port is controlling low speed flow/opening and allowing high speed flow. All down to the distance between the poker and the port cover and the swiss cheese compressing like a spring under pressure.

Cheers for that.

deanfbm – Member

retro83 – Had a butchers at those threads, all completely reasonable to me, it also explains the shape of the swiss cheese plastic tube, which i have been scratching my head over for a while.

I’m in agreement with you, gate does alter when the port is controlling low speed flow/opening and allowing high speed flow. All down to the distance between the poker and the port cover and the swiss cheese compressing like a spring under pressure.

Cheers for that.

Same here about the swiss cheese spring, and as I understand it that is exactly the right explanation for how the gate works too 😀

bigjim – Member

OK well I’ll have a search, I have revs with adjustable floodgate and adjustable moco compression damping, so I’m interested to see if there is anything in this. Just seems odd that RS don’t mention this highly useful feature?!

Yes it is odd, personally I wonder if the designers made the system a lot more flexible than the marketing folk wanted it to be.

Interesting read. My (pushed) Van R feels harsh/hard over roots, but beautiful over everything else.

That’ll be needing less high speed compression then, that I’ll need TfT to adjust? And will “lowering”it åffect the shock in any other way?

trickydisco – Member

anyone done the Damper mod?

Just spoke to tftuned and they didn’t recommend it

I’ve done it, and it seems to do what it says on the tin. Haven’t found any drawbacks. Though that’s for Mission Control, no idea if there’s an equivalent for Motion Control

How much did it cost Northwind? And was it easy todo?
I rode yesterday with 2 clicks of motion control on and I think it made a difference on 2/3 foot drops but was not noticeable when riding.

GEOFF1 – Member

How much did it cost Northwind? And was it easy todo?

Zero pounds, and took 10 minutes. But remember that’s for mission control (in lyriks and the like)

Any answer to my post above please?

Also bearing in mind I only suffer from “harsher” initial feel over roots, is there any advantage (with the obvious disadvantage being comfort orientated I guess)to having a harder high frequency bump compression setup (I race the odd enduro)?

Kryton57 – Member

Any answer to my post above please?

Also bearing in mind I only suffer from “harsher” initial feel over roots, is there any advantage (with the obvious disadvantage being comfort orientated I guess)to having a harder high frequency bump compression setup (I race the odd enduro)?

Yes it does sound like a little too much high speed compression damping. I think the advantage is that the fork/shock won’t bang straight through the travel on bigger hits.

I know nothing of the internals of the Van R, but I guess the high speed damping can be adjusted by TF Tuned or similar altering the shim stack.