I’m kinda new to this air sprung malarkey having ridden a LT hardtail with a coil fork since a long time.

So as I understand it if I want my fork or shock to not give up the travel so easy I can either increase the air pressure or add spacers.

I’m running my fork with ~20% sag and the shock with 25-30%.

I find the fork (Fox 36 RC2) a little too soft and it gives up more travel than I would expect on relatively small drops (comparing it to my coil Lyrik). The same can be said for the shock (Float X Evol). I’m surprised that I am using most of the travel on relatively tame trails or drops that wouldn’t have caused me any drama on the hardtail.

I would like a little more reserve with both the fork and shock.

I’ve tried increasing pressures, but I then feel perched on the bike and I’m not sure running at excessively high pressures is the right solution.

I see that spacers come in various sizes. Is the size I need dependent on my weight?

How easy are they to install?

Yours, Confused

Pretty easy?

YouTube

Personally I like to use spacers and drop air pressure slightly.

Set sag
Set rebound and compression if you have it
Add volume spacers to prevent bottom out

Worked for me

This any use?

Suspension Tech: How MRP Ramp Control Cartridges differ from volume spacers

What do you mean by giving up too much of its travel? Is it bottoming too often or harshly? Are you feeling wallowy and unsupported in the middle of the travel or is it just that you don’t think you should have used as much as you did?

Volume spacers only have a significant effect on the last quarter of the travel, so adding them makes it harder to bottom out. If the problem is that you’re using more of the midstroke than you want then they won’t help (a Luftkappe would but that doesn’t fit Fox forks).

If you add some more high speed compression damping though it should make the fork firmer on those hits and stop it plunging so much.

Adding a volume spacer improved the RP23 on my Alpine no end.
Pre spacer it was either like rock of bottoming out riding of the kerb.
And because the collapse of the back end affected the front end geometry I couldn’t get the forks to work either.
One large volume spacer later and it was like a different bike.
Less pressure in the shock, better on the small stuff, and taughter and more responsive too.

And because the bike geometry was returned to how the designer intended, the front end started working too.

Extortionate for a bit of plastic but effective.

I’m a “larger” type – 100kg. I understand they may not be as necessary for racing snakes.