Hi all,

With the wetter weather I have been thinking a bit more about suspension set up… and need some hive mind thoughts

Fork is a stock 100mm SID. At 80kg I have 115psi (incidentally the RS online guide recommends 117psi for my weight which I only just found) and the rebound as fast as it goes. There are 5 clicks of LSC damping available on the compression/ lockout lever but I leave that open.

That has been a great set up in the dry where the fork is very active, stays high in the travel and is lovely to plow down rocky, rooty stuff.

In the wet however the fast rebound definitely has the fork pinging off wet roots. Just to see the difference I set the rebound in the middle (13 of 26 clicks IIRC) and there was noticeably more grip on the wet roots but significant packing down on stepped rocky stuff.

So after all that waffle how do you go about getting your rebound right (assuming you actually care 😉 )?

Do you like to start fast and slow it down until you feel the wet root grip is good and the “pinging” stops or do you like to start slow and make the rebound faster until the packing down on stepped repeated hits stops?

I guess it depends what you value and where/ how you ride but I am curious to have the hive minds thoughts 🙂

Ta!

I use a shockwhiz. I have zero sensitivity to these things, I’m too busy hanging on to pay enough attention to the finer details.

I watched this video where they set the rebound to the fastest speed, then, whilst off the bik,  they compressed the fork and let go. If the wheel left the ground,  they reduced the rebound speed and repeated the compression. They did this until the wheel stopped leaving the ground.

I usually leave it at an in-between setting but having sped it up for faster riding and the choppy trails of the Tweed Valley recently, I was having some scary moments at Macc Forest in the wet yesterday eve.

So in summary, I need to twiddle with it more often I think.

Why does wet weather change the rebound you need?

I just set my rebound to as fast as possible without being bounced about. This does vary by the riding you are doing and the terrain though. So it’s not set and forget unless you only ride the same stuff all the time.

^ I did that and that’s part of how I arrived at the rebound being set to the fastest. I would definitely be approaching rebound as “the fastest you can get away with” by instinct which is similar to the video. The wheel doesn’t come up with the rebound at the fastest setting so I stuck with the fastest. Great in the dry but I feel there is something to be gained in the wet by tinkering 🙂

I wondered about coming at it from the other side for the wet- start slow and ride some slightly spaced out steps/ stepped rocky stuff and make the rebound faster if the fork is staying stuck down? Got to be worth an experiment 🙂

On most trails it is hard to feel the differences in rebound. It only seems to be the extremes of horrible wet roots that expose too fast rebound and stepped, repeated hits that expose too slow rebound. I may just have to ride those bits over and over and find a balance but curious to hear what other do.

The Shockwhiz is an interesting one that I am a bit skeptical about but would love to try. If anyone wants to loan one for a reasonable cost let me know 🙂

Molgrips, I would normally just go for one setting too but my tinkering got me thinking. Fastest rebound has been working well for me since getting the fork at the start of the drier weather and I had no complaints. It feels lovely to bomb down rough stuff and feels very responsive/ active (if that is the right description) when grip isn’t such an issue.

Just for funsies I set the rebound to the middle settings now we have a deluge and gained a lot of control and grip in tight, twisty rooted singletrack with roots going off in every direction. This felt like mainly because the front wheel wasn’t pinging off everything. It definitely packed down though. So I feel there is something to be gained but wonder how to best find that balance

Were you riding different trails because it was wet?

I got the idea from somewhere, that if rebound was too slow in the corner, front would tuck in, whereas were it too fast, ‘twould skip out.
If youre jumping you might want it faster, to get more pop off the lip?

If youre jumping you might want it faster, to get more pop off the lip?

Well I’m not jumping or bike set-up god, but fast rebound can be a bit unsettling when landing a jump or drop.

No, same trails that I ride to start or end most rides.

When the rebound is on the fast side there is definitely a lot less effort to pop off everything and the bike feels “playful” to use a tired magazine review term. I’m an XC mincer at best, but landing smaller stuff was manageable if you are really aggressive over the front wheel, but if the body position is a bit off or you start getting slack when tired it is definitely more of a handful.

I always thought very fast rebound was the way to go but I think there are some benefits to slowing things down… I just need to find the balance.

I rode a rigid SS for the 3 years prior to getting the SID so that does somewhat skew things

4 clicks, go ride.

used a shockwiz once. it agreed.

I think the top level DH guys do change their settings for grip in the wet or dry tracks so having settings for each isnt un heard of.

After watching some of the Fox Dialled series, Bracketing would be the suggestion, sounds like you’ve gone from no rebound dampening to half of the rebound dampening on, so maybe go back and remove half of what you applied so you have quarter of the dampening applied and test again?

or buy a new fork with high speed and low speed rebound to deal with roots and steps…

Shockwiz here too, set to playful and accept it’s not optimal for xc. If I were racing xc I’d not have a 160mm.