I have a 140mm Pike RCT3 on my YT Jeffsy and I got a shockwiz to help setup my fork. I’m now running 4 tokens and have the pressure at 46psi, which is what was recommended by the shockwiz to get everything green, however I still have HSC on red (make softer). I weigh about 88kg full kitted and the ride seems okay but isn’t amazing. I’m getting a dynamic sag of 15% and no deep compression events. This was from a ride at Swinley and I don’t tend to jump much (16 jumps with an average of 490ms).

I’m now wondering if there might be a fault with the fork, when I first got it I ran it at the recommended pressure but it was far too stiff. Could there be fault with the charge damper or could not enough oil in the lowers cause this?

If you are having to run so little pressure at that weight, it does sound significantly over damped.
I don’t know why it would be like that though.

On my 140mm pike I run it fairly soft at 55psi with 4 tokens and I’m only 70kg.

Was the fork new?  Could be too much / too heavy weight oil however compression damping has no effect on ride height or spring rate

Yes, it was a brand new bike I bought it in July.

I think shockwiz says the pike compression is too firm for most people and from my experience, I’m tempted to agree. I improved things by pulling the charger damper apart and moved the ring shim further away from the piston face.

However, lots of tokens and a low pressure seems like an odd spec. I think shockwiz has suggested this so you can make use of most of your travel. There’s a custom tuner in NZ who talks a lot of sense about setting air pressure by frequently. If it’s wallowy, add some air, if it’s rattling your teeth, let some out.

Shockwiz is a great tool and can help you get your head around what th adjustments do but the knowledge it gives is no substitute for the wisdom that needs to be applied.

As of this last couple of weeks I’ve had a shockwiz to play with, and its thrown up exactly the same over-damped compression on my pike and my lyrik.

Ever since I replaced a motion control revelation, I’ve never felt especially impressed by the pike in particular over its predecessor.

Having the fork over damped could well be the reason. I’m about to head out the the garage to put some lighter viscosity damping fluid in.

tjagain

Was the fork new?  Could be too much / too heavy weight oil however compression damping has no effect on ride height or spring rate

This is true when static or with slow speed inputs,, but dynamically, over damped high speed compression will resist inputs, and will not allow the fork to compress fast enough into its travel. The net result is a fork that won’t use as much travel overall, and will feel hard and rattly too.

In general, I’ve found the shockwiz to be a very informative tool. I’ve not taken all its advice, especially when it comes to spring rate and tokens, but its helped me to explore beyond the ‘drop down a kerb, see if it bounces’ approach that I’ve been using for nearly 20 years.

Your not the only one who feels Pikes have too much HSC damping, I’ve not noticed it at Swinley but have in the Alps and other bigger descents.

Some have commented that Chassis flex causes them to bind a bit too, I have noticed that but I was riding clumsily on stuff you might want a more DH fork than a trail fork.

Mine was definitely overdamped, but I weigh nowt- I’ve always just assumed they were set up for the larger gent.

Personally I’d try it with some of the tokens out ( they reduce the volume in the air spring?) as they will be causing the spring rate to ramp up higher as you get further into the travel

If that don’t work try lighter oil in the damper

Yeah, I’m going to try taking out the tokens and see how different it feels. Can you lighten the oil in the RCT3 charge damper?

I was thinking of fitting a luftkappe, not sure if that would make any positive difference?

46PSI in a Pike at 88KG and it’s over damped?

Don’t buy a Fox 36RC2…

TJ giving suspension advice, priceless.

Take the tokens out, try to have as much air volume as you can. If you bottom out too easily, then add a token but keep the air pressure the same. Otherwise you just end up in a wallowy mess with no support and probably sitting too deep in your travel with it ramping up sharply at the end of the stroke (which you’ll hit more often!)

That said, if you’re happy taking the damper to bits, moving the ring shim away from the piston helps as it reduces the preload on the compression shims, but you won’t have the same range of adjustment on the LSC adjuster.

Changing to a lighter oil will affect both low speed compression and rebound, I don’t think it affects high speed movement that much. So it will definitely change things, but not necessarily the thing you want to change, the HSC.

Yes, a lufftkappe will help. By making the negative chamber larger, you’ll be able to run more pressure but still get the same sag and small bump response. With that higher air pressure and fewer (none?) tokens, you’ll get support through the travel without such a dramatic ramp up towards the end of the travel.

That ramp up towards the end, might well be what shockwiz is seeing which is reported as too much high speed compression damping.

You can get into the charger damper and swap to a lighter oil, but you then start messing with the rest of the damping. I personally think you’d be better served by moving the ring shim a couple of steps further away from the piston face.

It’s interesting that fork designers have Bern trying to mimic coil forks but people then go and stuff them full of spacers which is the opposite.

Also, don’t confuse static and dynamic sag. 15% dynamic sag is okay, it doesn’t mean you need a softer fork.

I hope this next comment doesn’t cause offense as its not intended to. Is it possible you have more fork than you need? It could be why you and shockwiz are struggling to use all of your travel, especially if you’re using the downhill profile. You might get a better setup if you try the firm/racing type profiles.

Wow, two near identical posts. I promise, there was m conferring or copying, I’m just a slow typist on a phone. Actually, all that above was pretty good going on a phone!

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px; background-color: #eeeeee;”>I weigh about 88kg full kitted</span>

<span style=”color: #444444; font-size: 12px;”> I’ve always just assumed they were set up for the larger gent.</span>

I’m a bit lighter than that, and also went down the route of more tokens / lower pressure (45 PSI & 2 extra tokens on 140mm – i.e. 3 total), but it’s a dead-end IMHO. The fork still felt ‘chattery’ on landrover track type surfaces, as if there was too much HSC.

What made a big difference for me was changing the <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>rebound</span> damping setup to the light tune (you reconfigure the existing shims – it’s in the service manual). I’ve now progressively removed all of the extra tokens that I’d fitted and upped the air pressure to 55 PSI and it’s like a different fork.

The rebound damping seemed best on 2-3 clicks from open, and didn’t feel too bad. I’ve now arrived at 8-10 clicks from open after changing the rebound damper, and the whole fork feels much better.

All settings have been arrived at gradually over about 3 months plus of riding both before and after changing the damper.

I’d recommend giving it a try before heading into messing with the compression stack (which I was ready to do).

Yes, I’m sure I’m over forked but it was all on the bike I bought. My Orange five has a Fox 32 float and that seems to be a perfect fork for me. I think I ride quite far back on the bike, I certainly have an issue with jumping where I pull up on the bars meaning I tend to land on the back wheel. I’m also a fairly floaty rider, I’m yet to break anything on a bike but I’m not particularly slow.

If it wasn’t for the shockwiz I probably wouldn’t have realised. I’m not using all the travel, I’ve never had shockwiz report a deep compression event.

I think I’ll start with taking all four of the tokens out (came with 2 by default) and the see what shockwiz then says. I’m running the balanced profile. I’ll keep this thread updated with my findings.

remove tokens, fit luftkappe and increase pressure.

Orangewinger – I’m around your weight and your pressure sounds way too low. With your Shockwiz it would be worthwhile checking the Compression Ratio a few times again because if this is measured wrong you could end up with too low pressure, incorrect sag and not picking up deep compression events. Also make sure you cycle the forks travel periodically during inflation to equalise the negative chamber. It would be worthwhile measuring that your travel is still at 140mm and not “sucked down”. I normally run Shockwiz on the “balanced” setting as “playful” and “aggressive” want you to use most of your travel most of the time. I normally ignore the HSC recommendations because I found that when you really push on steeper sections it often no longer recommends reducing the HSC. However, as others have said if you really want to reduce the HSC it can be done internally.

If your sag is right at 46psi then it sounds like the negative chamber is not charging properly.

FWIW though you’ll find unless you hammer it the Shockwiz has a tendency to tell you your forks are over damped on the high speed compression.

Tillydog, it interesting you mention the rebound damping setup… I’ve been convinced for a while that the ‘rapid recovery’ setup of rockshox forks is bollox. I’ve heard from rockshox designers that the most common mistake they see with fork setup is rebound being too slow. So its almost like they’ve tried to counter it by making the HSR faster. So if you set LSR at the correct rate for your spring you have a pogo stick when the HSR is working, but if you slow it down, it then packs and feels harsh.

I’ll try changing the rebound setup next time I’ve got the fork open. Did you just remove the rebound ring shim? Or put the crossover in as per the light tune in the manual?

Onzadog – great minds think a like!

How do I know if the negative chamber is charging properly?

I’ve just looked back through my saved profiles and back in October I only had amber for HSC, but this was when I was running 77 psi with 2 tokens. Shockwiz was suggesting red for pressure (remove air) and amber for ramp (add spacer). At this point the forks felt far too stiff.

As a heavier rider, body mass as well as style, I’ve considered switching to the lighter rebound tune so that I can run with the adjuster needle further into the orifice and force more fluid through the shim circuit for a more speed sensitive response.

Orangewinger, just make once change at a time. And make them in the order they appear on the screen, top to bottom.

I don’t want to pstronise, but did you recalibrate the compression ratio after changing the number of spacers? If no, that would mess things up.

“>Did you just remove the rebound ring shim? Or put the crossover in as per the light tune in the manual?”

I went with the ‘light tune’ arrangement in the manual, but IIRC, thus involves taking out the ring/preload shim (from the rebound damper) anyway.

I would say that the rebound felt OK before doing this, but I think there must be something funny happening in the transition from rebound to compression that made the fork feel harsh on small, choppy stuff – it’s always been fine on big lumps.

(WTF is going on with the formatting !???)

Yes, I did the recalibration each time I made a change. I dropped the pressure, then added a token and then dropped the pressure and finally added another token. All as suggested by shockwiz.

Re: How do I know if the negative chamber is charging properly? –

I found that easiest way is to let the air out of the fork slowly and if the fork sucks down into its travel and is difficult to pull into full extension the negative chamber probably wasn’t equalised. If the fork is sucking down it can often be resolved by forcibly pulling the fork into full extension – you’ll hear a small hiss and the fork will then be able to return to full extension. When inflating the fork I usually inflate by 1/3rd then cycle the fork travel and repeat until final pressure is achieved – sometimes at around 10mm of travel you can feel and obvious notch and hiss and the fork feels less firm – this is the negative chamber equalising.

When my fork was sucked down it felt very stiff at 75PSI and measuring the exposed stanchion revealed reduced travel.

Shockconfusion would be a better name by the looks of it. Just put the gadgets to one side it seems to be causing you more issues than it solves.

Take the tokens out. Set your sag standing on the bike in your going down a hill stance (25-30% depending on preference – you’ll need some one or something to hold the bike). Set the LSC and rebound in the middle.

Learn what the twiddly bits on your fork do for how it works. Go ride. Change stuff accordingly – one thing at a time.

I had a similar issue. I am 80kg. When my pike was set at 50psi the highs peed felt too hard over rough-ish stuff. My intention was to run it lower but that did more damage than good.

The remedy is to run more pressure so you stay in the softer part of your stroke. Currently I am running 60psi in the wet (70 when it is dry). I have no issues now and the fork works a dream. I didn’t change my volume but it might be worth reducing it if this doesn’t work.

Fitted the Luftkappe and had a few rides and so far it feels very nice. Running at 60psi and after slowing down the rebound the Shockwiz is pretty happy.

Fitting the shockwiz to the rear monarch was pretty straightforward and all it wanted me to do was to speed up rebound.