So, having been riding the bike fairly hard and fairly clumsily in Canada recently, I’ve noticed I’m still not getting the travel o-ring to the bottom of the shaft on my shock, in fact I’d say I’m missing at least the last 15mm of stroke.

The obvious solution is to lower my shock pressure. The pedalling is manageable so I was happy to do so but even 5psi less than the 215psi I was used to resulted in a lot of pedal strike and hanging up on things.

The way I see it is that I need the shock to ramp up less, which doesn’t sound like a tweek a suspension tuner could achieve without swapping shock bodies, am I right?

Can you get different linkages to achieve more travel?

Cheers

The stroke of the shock may be less than the visible length of the shaft.

If you’re happy with replacing the pressure, remove all the air and compress the linkage.

If you get the same amount of travel, then that is what the shock has and you’ll get no more!

I’m 13 stone and run my RP2 on my Pitch at 140psi!

Clearly not hard or clumsily enough,eh? 🙂

How goes it mate, eh? Think mines always been wround 140 too… to get thon sag indicator in the right zone, not that I check it much. Might try yer 215 next time for the craic.
Oh, and another thing,

Blame Canada, Blame Canada…It seems that everything’s gone wrong, Since Canada came along

Hope all else is going as smooth as your shock travel. (eh?)

(p.s. I’m reliably informed all Canadians end every sentence with ‘eh?’. Poke my eye out and cut off my arm if I’m wrong)

Haha, Rob, finishing sentences with Eh? is an Edinburgh thing too, so I fit right in. And yes, I’m riding clumsy enough, oh yes.

I know the shock should travel the full length of the shaft as I deflated it for the flight. I tried lowering the pressure by 5p.s.i. the other night and noticed an improvement straight away, although I still didn’t get full travel and got some pedal strike.

Think I’ll just keep dropping it 5 p.s.i. at a time until it gets unmanageably pedal-strikey..

That will work but I’d always do it the other way around.

try this..
First drop your saddle right out the way, then rolling along at about walking pace on a flat firm surface while stood up, push down as hard and fast as you can through your thighs while simultaniously hanging back off the bars (arms straight) so your arse is over the back as you push down. repeat and lower the pressure in the shock until you can just feel your shock very lightly bottom out.
if you are strong and co-ordinated enough (with the push) the point at which your shock lightly bottoms will only be very slightly soft for a smooth rider to only achieve full travel on the hardest/fastest hits. use this pressure as a starting point, go for a short (but typical speed/terrain of your usual rides) ride and fine tune by adding 5psi increments to reduce bottoming til you are happy.

You’re probably already aware that pedal strikes are mostly down to rider error?. Low BB heights can improve stability and improve cornering ability but the reduced pedal clearance is def not everyone’s cup of tea but once you get used to bikes with less BB/pedal clearance your skills at reading the terrain ahead, timing and planning of your pedal position should improve. Even if at first you find the BB so low there are many more situations where you simply can no longer pedal at all, if you do stick with it your riding style will adapt and techniques other than pedalling to manage/gain speed/momentum should also develop further.

The o ring should be able to reach the bottom of the shock, I haves Pitch and achieve full rear travel quite often.

Took me a while to avoid rock strikes with the low bottom bracket, it’s just something you adapt to though.

I’m about 80kg kitted up at a guess, I run about 135psi.

A HV air can will give less ramp up at end of stroke, but also softer in the middle. Very easy to install yourself.

As everyone else is doing it, at ~82kg, a HV air can, to stop it bottoming out too easy, i was running 210ish psi, when i went to a standard volume air can, that dropped to 180psi. I thought the bike rode terrible with a HV air can though, was down to 10% sag to stop bottom out.

What %sag are you running? Pitches really aren’t bad at pedalling, it has a low bb, occasional pedal strikes are part of that, run the pitch how its meant to bu run 20-30% sag i think and change your technique.

Yep, its dawning on me that I just need to ‘learn’ how ride a full sus after years on a hardtail, problem is I’m learning on the north shore trails in Vancouver so the opportunities for pedal strike are near endless, as are the opportunities for losing all your momentum and needing to pedal out! 😀

Good advice about the HV air can Dean, I’ll maybe try the other tips first though, save some cash for the UST rims I think I’m going to need soon… 🙄

I rode a hire spesh pitch in Spain last year Ian, and my abiding memory was lots of pedal strikes!, bombproof bike though.

Hope your enjoying Canada mate, all the best.

Greg.

Hi

I’ve just sold my Pitch Pro 2010 and used to have an issue with pedal strikes when i first got it. In the end i swapped out the Truvativ crankset for a Shimano SLX Double and Bash with 165mm crank arms and it greatly reduced the strikes. The Truvativ was 170-175mm (can’t remember exactly but they were definitely longer). My riding weights 74kg (ish) and i ran 135-140psi in the rear shock and got full travel. As others have said you learn to ride around the problem to a degree but moving to shorter crank arms helped me.