Fox Float Shock – Can you artificially reduce the travel?

I have a bike (actually, my son’s bike) with a 2016 Fox Factory Float shock. The shock is 200mm eye to eye and seems to have 57mm of travel. This works perfectly on the frame, with full shock travel mapping perfectly to full frame travel. (Shock and frame were not originally together)

The problem is that the standover on the bike is a little bit high and with the bike having loads of travel (6″ – it’s a lot for a kid!) I’d be willing to lose 1 or 2 inches of travel to lower the standover – effectively, have the frame permenantly “sagged” by an inch or two.

From a fork point of view, you can do this by just chucking spacers into the air cylinder, which reduce the travel and the fork length together, but can you do the same with a Fox shock? In my naive view, it would seem like a spacer placed between the internal slider and the back of the can would effectively stop the shock from extending to its full length (locking it at, say, 50mm instead of 57mm), while leaving the fully compressed length unaffected.

Anyone tried this? Is there an “official” solution here? Fox have great videos on their website for adjusting forks, but nothing that I can see for doing the same with a shock… :-/

Run more sag but yes the 200-57 can be converted to a 200-50. Stand over is mostly irrelevant though.

Run more sag but yes the 200-57 can be converted to a 200-50. Stand over is mostly irrelevant though.

Thanks – any hint how? 🙂

I agree about standover in general, but this is a kid’s bike and said kid’s nuts are sat a bit too close to the cross bar for his comfort. In truth, the bike is a little big for him, but he’s so desperate to get on it, it’s worth a bit of faff to try.

Running back 200-50 won’t reduce stand over it will just limit travel (static length is constant). A 190-50 would be equivalent to an (imaginary) 200-60 10mm into its travel. That might lower it a bit (assuming the frame has enough clearance for effectively 60mm of shock travel).

Eccentric bushes used to be available to effectively shorten the shock by a few mm, obviously the effect depends on the stroke/travel ratio of the frame… I assume you can still get them.

Alternatively you could look for a shorter shock, if it’s fitted with a 200/57, a 190mm with 50mm stroke also used to be a pretty common size IIRC…

Might be an idea to reduce fork A2C also as otherwise the whole frame will be slackened back which may not be ideal.

How about dropping a wheel size for a short period. 26″ if it’s a 27.5″ frame or 24″ in a 26″ frame.

How about dropping a wheel size for a short period. 26″ if it’s a 27.5″ frame or 24″ in a 26″ frame.

Already done 🙂 It’s got 26″ in a 27.5″ frame.

The comments made above are quite correct. In reality, what I’m trying to do is convert a 200/57 shock into a 190/50 (or similar). There’s a good article here about doing it on a different Fox shock:
http://faqload.com/faqs/bicycle-components/suspension/fox-float-r-shock-shortening
The downside, is that the spacer has to go into the IFP, which, reading this, is beyond my DIY abilities:
https://www.ridefox.com/help.php?m=bike&id=549
(in reality, the biggest restriction here is the 500psi Nitrogen recharge!)

Perhaps time to scour eBay for a replacement shock…