I had my first chance to properly use my new forks on the weekend, riding down Nutcrackers on Dartmoor. I’m about 12st or so with gear and have a soft spring.

I didnt really play around enough to work out how to adjust the compression settings, but reckon the fork was diving more than I expected.

So, given that I’m travelling slowly and picking my way down, do I need to turn up the High or Low speed compression?

The Rockshox guide doesnt really make that clear to me, and it is possible that they were packing down and I need less rebound damping.
The guide talks about landing from jumps and riding flowing trails, but not my style of mincing on techie stuff.

cheers

There’s a specific guide kicking about for Lyriks. Hopefully someone knows the link if you haven’t already seen it. IIRC it says start with 4 clicks on everything and tweak from there.

What is your email addres, i’ve got a PDF file that i found which which gives good base settings to start from?

Too much brake dive – more slow damping
Too much travel on drops / hitting rocks – more fast damping.

splumley@blueyonder.co.uk

scruff – the Rockshox Mission Control guide talks about 10 clicks on Low Speed for “slow steep descending” to minimized endo potential. I hadnt read that before I went out yesterday, or I would have tried it (but I thought Low Speed Compression was more for holding up the forks on smooth terrain and when cornering).

This seems to answer my question, but is contrary to most stuff I’ve read from other users. Does it depend on whether you’re hitting techie stuff slowly (which most of us probably are) or at pro-DH 40mph speeds?

the Rockshox Mission Control guide talks about 10 clicks on Low Speed for “slow steep descending” to minimized endo potential. I hadnt read that before I went out yesterday, or I would have tried it (but I thought Low Speed Compression was more for holding up the forks on smooth terrain and when cornering).

This seems to answer my question, but is contrary to most stuff I’ve read from other users. Does it depend on whether you’re hitting techie stuff slowly (which most of us probably are) or at pro-DH 40mph speeds?

yes, it’s low speed compression (or high speed). It’s just the speed of the shaf, the fork doesn’t know if it’s diving from braking/corner/weight shift or from a very slow impact. So if you ride into a rock/step slowly it’s the low speed damping doing the work.

soft spring doesn’t sound right for 12st, I would try a medium.

Sent that email to you mate, provided good base settings for me. But agree that medium spring probably best for you.

I am 11.5stone naked and felt the soft spring was better than the medium for almost everything. I would have prefered a spring between soft and medium.

If you are going really slow on steep stuff your may have alot of weight forward, so more slow will counteract that, same as brake dive / cornering. If you slowly drop the front onto a rock an it dives too much on impact then you need more high speed damping.
Spring needs to be correct to give you correct sag with no damping wound on whilst you are in a normal riding position. Rebound settings makes a big difference aswell, you dont want it too fast on slower steep rocky trails IMO.

you are on the wrong spring.

I am 11.5 and use a medium -its what the manual says!

set them up as per http://www.sram.com/_media/pdf/tuning_guides/missioncontrol_tuningguide_en.pdf

4-4-1 and forget, I never change the settings – works a treat. Mine are about at 130mm sagged riding along the road.

Have a looksy here:
http://www.sram.com/_media/pdf/en/rockshox/MissionControl_Guide.pdf

I might go back to the medium, but wasnt getting much travel when I used it initially (though things might not have worn in, and it was on fairly tame trails). 160lb is the recommeded cross over point, reckon I’m 147lbs + gear, so around that mark in total.

But the general concensus seemed to be that the Rockshox spring recommendations (like their Air Pressure charts) were a bit on the firm side.

Obviously I need to go back and ride that trail 2 or 3 times to experiment (would be fun, but time is short!)

Paul – thanks, I’ll take a look at home. Interesting idea about different oil weight.

Ps – wasnt getting anywhere near enough sag when using the supplied medium spring

http://locotuning.co.uk/tech-info.html have a look at the guide and try and dial the dive out on the compression, if this doesn’t work you’ll need the medium spring. Don’t bother messing about with changing oil weights as one manufacturers 5 wt maybe significantly thicker/thinner than anothers.