Interested to know how much use other single pivot riders make of the various settings on their rear shock. Do you frequently change settings during a ride, or do you leave it in the same place 90% (or even 100%) of the time?

I kept it on and never turned it off or ‘just’ occasionally at a trail centre. RP23’s on a Prophet and a Superlight

Never felt the need on my old Hecklers.

Leave it in the middle setting most of the time on my Mount Vision.

Opps yes, same again, always on, on my MV too… it been awhile since I had that one.
Damn been that long, that I’d forgotten the last one with a RP23 (I had a number under warranty) was actually a quad linkage not SP.

On for anything other than uphill fireroad/road (SC superlight29er)

Fox evo CTD on my Alpine. Stays in ‘trail’ most of the time. Only goes into ‘climb’ on longer tarmac drags, and ‘descend’ is deployed only on rough rocky stuff.

Full open (off) 99.9% of the time. Very occasionally turn on propedal for long fire road slogs, but it is rare. This is on a Five

yup use it on when climbing and open when descending (rp23 on a 5) never seemed a prob switching on the move and i find it makes a difference…

uphill on

Downhill off

is this not the point of the system?
I may switch it off if it was an incredibly rocky climb

never on on my VPP linkage frame- well perhaps on a smooth long slog

Ccdb coil on my five. Dosent have a propedal and i dont feel the need for one. Very rarely use the lockout on the pikes either

Same as Rocketdog.

Thanks folks.

Quite a lot of variety; from always off to always on, plus RD and Wally who seem to turn it off for the climbs ! 🙂

My Five came with a CTD-A shock, which has 3 different trail settings, plus the open (Descend) and “locked” (Climb) positions. I used to be a frequent fiddler; changing modes for each section of trail. But it wasn’t really based on any experience, more just my preconceptions of what I should use (climb for climbing etc). Then I seemed to slowly graduate to just sticking it in climb for the climbs and leaving it open the rest of he time (ignoring those three Trail modes altogether). Recently I’ve taken to just leaving it open all the time.

The funny thing is that, while it is easy to feel the difference between the modes just bouncing the bike (i.e. they seem to work fine) I don’t notice much difference in the times out on the trail. Maybe I was a touch more tired at the end of Saturday’s ride (leaving it open) but it was a greay windy day with 2,000 foot of climbing and the trails were very wet, so it’s hard to say whether it had anything to do with not using pro pedal.

I’ve also (accidentally) left it in Climb mode for descents and not really noticed. I guess that isn’t so surprising. It is just low speed compression damping that changes, right? So hitting bumps/rocks/roots at any speed should feel the same whatever mode you are in, it just keeps it more propped up in corners etc with the prodel on.

Anyway, thanks again for the imput. I think I’ll try leaving it in the softest Trail mode next and see how that feels.

You probably need to ask what front chainrings they have and how tall they are. Smaller chainrings generate more anti-squat whilst a higher CoG needs more.

Never really bothered when I had an RP23 on My Alpine 160. And now running a CCDB coil. Not missing Pro Pedal

You probably need to ask what front chainrings they have and how tall they are. Smaller chainrings generate more anti-squat whilst a higher CoG needs more.

It’s a fair point, although I was still surprised by how much variability there was, with some folk using pro-pedal almost all the time and others rarely (if ever) touching it.

I guess it will depend a lot on how and where you ride though. For example, I pretty much never stand (unless I need to give my back a rest) and prefer to spin my way up a climb. Climbs round here also tend to be 20-30mins (or more) of spinning up in the granny ring (so lots of anti-squat), which may explain why I don’t seem to get much advantage from the pro-pedal settings.

I have a CTD on my 29 superlight. I have it it on trail all the time, unless it’s really rocky downhill.

I don’t climb out of the saddle, so don’t use the lock-out at all.

I feel almost like my pedal strokes are tuned to the very slight bob now, and I tend to bounce in the saddle a lot if I lock the shock out. Bike also seems to take a little more effort uphill with the shock locked out too… (strange I know).

EDIT: I use a 22 and 32 on the front. I can’t tell that one produces more bob than the other to be honest.

think mines a ctd tuned for a four bar but running on a heckler. PP off for downhill on for pretty much everything else.

Mostly run it on 3 aswell, never really bothered with 1 and 2. If I was doing a loooong quite pedally but mostly downhill trail I might use a lower pp on constantly but just full on or off mostly.

Was fully open all the time but have now switched to a coil over Vanilla RC and while it might be a bit heavier, I haven’t weighed it and I don’t care. It feels THAT much better.

I think the on/off debate depends on how much that bobbing/squatting stuff drives you mad – or whether you simply don’t notice it at all. It’s also dependent on how you set your shock up (sag) and (rebound damping).

I feel that if I have set the rear shock up with the ‘right’ amount of psi (sag), the bike (2008 Orange Five) will need pro pedal on for smooth flats and climbs and off for descents. If I dial in more rebound damping (go figure?) or psi, I’m less likley to feel the need for pro pedal, so will leave it off all the time. Then again, the bike will probably also be riding like a bag of spanners on top of a bucking horse.

Squat and bob absolutely drive me mad though. I sometime wish there where an ‘ultra’ pro-pedal setting that would basically lock things out, particularly on my single pivot Yeti ASR5 this weekend. Even with pro-pedal on, the bobbing was driving me a little crazy. Cue more fiddling with psi and rebound.. 🙄