For this episode of All About Bikes, we explore the basics of suspension setup. A topic that may seem simple but is one of the more complex components of mountain bikes. If you are new to suspension setup or want a refresh on your knowledge, this episode of AAB is for you.
For this episode of All About Bikes, we explore the basics of suspension setup. A topic that may seem simple but is one of the more complex components of mountain bikes. If you are new to suspension setup or want a refresh on your knowledge, this episode of AAB is for you.
Hello, and welcome to all about bikes the podcast from Pivot cycles. My name is installed in today's episode, my guests are Jim Norman and Sergio Avantor, from fox racing shocks. With Jim we work on the UI side of things and Sergio is deeply involved into the technical side. He worked in Supercross in the past with legends like James Stewart, and today he and Jim will give you an overview on the basics of suspension setup, we will cover things like what an aspirin actually is, how it works, and how the rest of the knobs and dials will affect what you feel on the bike, you may want to save this episode to your device to hear it twice or share it with your friend. Later in this episode, we also dive a little bit deeper into the interaction of settings. So this is not only beneficial for someone who wants to get to know the basics, to feel encouraged to do some changes by themselves, but also for freshen up your knowledge you already had, but aren't quite so sure on anymore. Let's get started. Today on our podcast, I have Jim Norman and Dr. Joe Avantco. From Fox as guests. Good morning. Good morning.
Unknown:Good morning.
Jens Staudt:Today, we want to cover some basics for people which may not be super familiar what their bike and their suspension and their Fox suspension might be able to do. So let's start with the very basics. Most modern mountain bike suspension works with an air spring, what is an air spring
Unknown:in air spring acts as a as an energy storage device, you can think of an air spring like a syringe with a closed and as you start it you can imagine if you started pushing down on the on the syringe and it was closed on the other end, no air could come out the other end. So it would get progressively harder as you push it up and we call an air spring. Nonlinear what that means is as you compress it, the force changes the the change in force grows as you compress it, it's not the rate of change deeper in the stroke is higher than it is on the initial. So the force builds up kind of like a curve like like you could think of it like a skateboard ramp where a coiled spring is the other method of springing a vehicle is a linear force. And that means is that each step is the same difference from the previous one. So as you can press it, it does get stiffer, but it doesn't start to grow and ramp up like an air spring does. When you compare the two systems. And when you when you build a suspension system, it's the spring and the damper paired together to create the effect that we're after. So the spring holds the energy that supports you and the damper controls the release of that energy. So they work in tandem. So when you're adjusting your air spring, you're basically changing the rate of buildup of force of the fork or the shock.
Jens Staudt:Thinking of a car. I never adjusted any spring rate, why do I need to adjust it on my bike.
Unknown:So the way especially when it comes to two wheeled vehicles, the sag point where the bike settles when you sit on it is where is late, I call it the business end of the suspension. That's where everything happens. Like when you when you take off of a jump face or you're initiating a corner, you tend to you tend to hang out around where your springs compress to when you sit on them. So just like you're saying, with a car, if you're have a truck, for example, and you filled the back with concrete, it would compress the suspension to a point where you wouldn't have any suspension left because it would be really, really close to bottom. So keeping in mind that example, it's the same with one rider to the next, where if for example, they're going on a really long ride, and they're packing a lot of water with them. When they set their sag full weight, they would find that the bike is compressing deeper than it normally does. So it ensures that when you change when you change your spring, when you adjust your air spring, for example, with a mountain bike, you're ensuring that where you're spending the majority of the time is in the ideal spot for the bike to function the way that it was intended to. If you ignore that, you won't be getting the most potential out of your suspension. So when you adjust it you're making you're fine tuning it so that when you're riding around in a let's call it a sketchy situation, the bike doesn't feel too tall, for example, making it difficult to control or it's not sitting too low and making you bottom out excessively. So you're balancing compression rebound by trying to hang out approximately in the middle for for what we're talking about. Now for simplicity sake,
Jens Staudt:you said by jump sitting on top It will compress the suspension. And so you basically affecting your ride height.
Unknown:Exactly. So when we, the first thing we do, and this carries over for all forms of professional racing for two wheels, setting sag is the is the most critical part of your setup. So it's easy to overlook that because it's, it doesn't seem like it would be that important. But that's the first thing we go after. And, and nail down. And we always check when we have an issue with how the suspension is feeling to ensure that the writing in the correct spot as defined by the manufacturer, for example, when you measure static sag, you know, you sit on the bike, and the best situation would be somebody holding you up. And you can sit or stand depending on how you do it. But however you do it, make sure it's consistent. So if you want to stand on your pedals and centralize your weight on the bike, somebody would measure how much your suspension is compressed. And based on the frame manufacturers they've defined through testing, what the ideal spot is for that to settle to,
Jens Staudt:we had Pivot do that with the sag indicator at the shock. So you can line up the O ring with this tiny marker. And you from Fox, you also offer rig in regards of the rider weight, the certain amount of air pressure and some clicks. But we get to that later, if we
Unknown:just kind of define that sag is kind of you know, when you're on the bike, it's the amount that the suspension settles in with the load applied. So with you sitting on the bike, that's where the suspension sits, where the downward force of your mass is balanced by the upward force of the spring. So more mass means you need more force from the springs to support that weight. And as we mentioned, bike manufacturers typically designed for a specific amount of sag, because it kind of sets the character of the bike, it sets where the right height is. And it also has an effect on things like head angle and seat angle and bottom bracket height. And if your sag if you have too much sag or your suspension is too soft, the bike will ride too low. And that reduces the amount of available travel in the suspension for bumps. If you run with too little sag, which is too firm, that makes the bike ride too high. And it just kind of reduces the effectiveness of the suspension because you're not really using it the way it's intended to be used. And if you have an imbalance where sag is much greater in the on the shock of that the rear wheel versus the fork, you can end up with your bottom bracket being too low. Your seat angle is too slack your head angles to Slack, and it can affect how the bike feels. And likewise, if your sag is set too low at the fork, you come into a corner and get on the brakes and your weight shifts forward, it compresses the fort more than it needs to be. And that steepens the head angle and changes the handling of the bike as you enter the turn. So what we're trying to do with sag is to get a good balance of the bike where you have usable suspension, travel, and predictable handling.
Jens Staudt:So now you have your front and rear balanced, you have your perfect spot in regards of SAC, then what's next
Unknown:we'd like to do is especially on on a mountain bike with a designs of shock, there's there's obviously adjustments that exist in there. And so depending on how much air pressure you have, or how high your spring is, you'd like to adjust the rebound to match that the rebound damping to match that spring rate. So what rebound damping does is when you compress your spring, like say you sit on your bike and then you get off your bike, you get off your bike and your bike starts to rise basically go up to the top of the suspension, you're controlling the speed at which it extends. And so as you add more spring energy, you need to add more rebound damping. So damping is an energy absorber. So as you add more energy, you need more absorption of that energy in order to control that spring rate. If you don't do that, if you just increase spring rate without dealing with your rebound, you'll tend to have an uncontrolled rebound stroke. And for example in the front forks if you boost up because your bottom and your pressure and you don't respond with rebound typically when you would go into a corner and you would be coming to the middle of the corner where you're gonna start leaving the corner. So by that I mean your weight is starting to shift back like say you're starting to descend. The fork would extend and make you push wide in the corner that's that's a symptom. have not enough rebound control where you're trying to hold an inside line. And then you keep drifting outside because of lack of control on the extension stroke, it's really, really critical for traction.
Jens Staudt:So without a rebound, we would just basically ride around on a pogo stick.
Unknown:Exactly. And it's an interesting experiment, if you've ever been early on in, in the 90s, the there used to be quite a few failures with the early mountain bike dampers. And you know, those of us that got to experience the joy of short travel early design mountain bike forks also probably got to experience riding sprung bike without any damping. And that's really when you get the true feeling of the energy that you're trying to control. Because yes, quite literally, you're on a double pogo stick, and try to try and hit your lines with lack of control is incredibly difficult, because the spring and the wheel assembly have quite literally a mind of their own. And they're very difficult for you to control with your own bodyweight.
Jens Staudt:On most high end mountain bikes, you also have a second dial, a second read rebound dial, so one of them is low speed rebound, and another one is high speed rebound. What is the difference? If you may put this in simple words?
Unknown:Yeah, that one's complicated. It's certainly when you start talking about high speed and low speed rebound, it's easy to get those things confused. But I think one of the things to understand when you're playing with these circuits, let's just start there. So if you're taking a look at your two dials, and you're trying to figure out, you know, what you should do my advice is with all of these circuits, try and one at a time. And so the low speed rebound circuit is something that affects the spring as it just starts turning around. So it takes time on the rebound stroke. So as the suspension is extending, it takes a little bit of time for it to pick up speed. And the first thing it has to do is start moving. So you imagine that you're at a stoplight, it goes from red to green, you hit the gas, and you start moving, but you're going very slow, and then you start to pick up speed, very obvious, the same thing happens in suspension. So right at turnaround right, when the suspension stops compressing and goes into rebound, you have the low speed, damping, low speed rebound damping, that'll affect that area. When it's has a little bit of time, away from the turnaround point, it'll start seeing high speed. But I will caution that rebound is one of the most difficult things for riders to feel because they're not necessarily getting feedback into their hands like the compression stroke. So always the advice with the adjusters is put them in the middle of the adjuster range. And then if you want to play around, find a section with a bunch of bumps maybe that you're not so comfortable with. And try a little more rebound try a little bit less really to understand how that impacts your writing. And you'll very quickly see that it can fundamentally change the way that the bike feels both entrance and exit of the corner, it's really a critical adjustment that is that can be quite challenging to nail down. But we would obviously define the spring energy by adjusting the spring rate and then start taking a look at the rebound adjustments in a controlled way to optimize basically for yourself what you need from the vehicle. It's important
Jens Staudt:to understand that low speed not necessarily refers to a low riding speed on high speed is not referring to a high speed on a bike.
Unknown:Exactly, we should probably clarify when we speak about low speed and high speed adjustments. Those refer to the speed of the damper shaft and not the speed of the rider. So it's how quick is the fork or shock compressing and rebounding? And not how fast is the rider moving across the ground?
Jens Staudt:Pivot Ed Fox, we both give the riders in regard to the amount of pressure they are spring rate they have in their fork and shock. We give recommendations for rebound. As you said, Sergio, you can fine tune that. And it's not like you need to have these exact settings. It's just a starting point. Is it that you can have a setting that is maybe five to 10 clicks off of that recommendation, is this then wrong? Or could it be personal taste for
Unknown:my experience. And everyone learns how to ride a bicycle in a unique way and fundamentally based on the conditions where you grew up. So if you remember back to where you've learned to ride a bicycle, chances are if you spent a lot of time wherever that was, you develop unique techniques, not only for the people that you rode with, that you've learned and grew from, but how to deal with the conditions that you're familiar with. And so, rebound, all the adjustments actually but rebound specifically is something that is very, very unique and tailored to the writer. I've been able to basically blow out some of the standards that people establish, because I'm trying to create a unique effect with a rider. So I don't necessarily have fundamental rules. But you will find that if you use too much rebound, your traction is going to start degrading. And so the the penalty you pay is the bike is going to feel more dead. And by that I mean, if you go to jump at, it doesn't feel like it wants to leave the ground, it's kind of, he can say kind of stuck to the ground. But that really isn't necessarily true. It just doesn't feel very bouncy and active. And so if you are a really, really fast rider, and you need a level of control over a set of bumps, and you're strong enough to hang on over it, I could imagine you're running more rebound than let's say somebody who's just starting to ride and doesn't have those advanced bike skills. So based on rider level, that rebound can be quite different.
Jens Staudt:And you mentioned that the bike is not able to leave the ground. But if the suspension bond return to the full extent of the sack point, you could get we call that packing like it's stuck into travel.
Unknown:Exactly. And especially over a series of bumps. So the question to ask yourself is when you're going into a corner, and you have a bunch of breaker bumps, which are pretty typical, especially after the near the end of the season, when the dirt is baked, you'll want to see is if it's feeling bad, this isn't just feeling poor over those series of bumps, isn't feeling worse as you progress through the bumps. So picking off on what you said, if the rebound, if the suspension isn't extending fast enough, by the time it gets to the next bump, it's a little bit compressed, because it has wasn't able to return to its full extension, it goes to the next bump compresses a little more, the next bump compresses a little more. So by the time you hit the fifth or sixth bump, you're you're starting to run out of travel. And that usually feels pretty terrible. So yeah, that's exactly what happens it starts to pack is the term we use. And that basically means it doesn't is unable to return to full extension, because you've added too much high or low speed damping,
Jens Staudt:our rider now has figured out his ride height with the amount of pressure in his suspension, and he has figured out the rebound settings. Is he good to ride?
Unknown:Yeah, that's if as long as the so we also have the compression circuit that also affects the way the suspension feels. And that one is is is tricky, but it's a little bit more straightforward. So my suggestion would be put the compression circuits, the adjusters in the middle of the range, if you have your air spring and your rebound, figured out, like we just decided or just talked about, go on a ride and find those deficiencies, because what that'll tell you is it gives you a roadmap for how to adjust your compression adjusters to do the last portion of dialing it in. And you're going to either find that you're not using, you're not using enough stroke, for example. Or you're you're bottoming out using all of the suspension stroke quite easily. So that's those are obvious problems. And as you get more close to optimal setting, things don't become things aren't as obvious. But initially, what I would say is put the put the compression justice in the middle of the range, do a quick little ride and see does that bike feel like you can ride comfortably and feel safe, if not adjust the compression adjusters based on what you're feeling.
Jens Staudt:compression damping is just the opposite from rebound damping.
Unknown:It's just damping in the bump direction. That slows the rate at which the suspension compresses. And I like to use an example, with with your body weight. If you stand on a small stepstool and you jump off, your body accelerates towards the ground, and you hit the ground with your feet. And then you have to use the muscles in your leg to prevent your body from continuing on and collapsing onto the ground. So your legs are kind of compression damping. So that's one instance. But now let's say we you drop out of a tree and you're falling from a meter high, while your body generates a lot more force because it's accelerated to a higher speed. And when you hit the ground, then you need a lot more force from your muscles to prevent you from smashing into the ground. So that's an example of higher compression damping in a very rough description. jumping out of a tree, but you're right, you're right. If you're hitting really big bumps, you might need more compression damping to prevent the fork or shock from bottoming out super hard
Jens Staudt:it we have the same system on like on the rebound we have a high speed compression damping and we also have a low speed compression damping. We already explained that this is not connected to your actual riding speed with your bike. So what is the difference in in your suspension for the rider how you can explain that
Unknown:between low speed and high speed compression damping? Correct. So the easiest way to think about the separation between the two is low speed, low speed is most of the stuff you're going to feel. So humans are going to be really good at feeling those lower damper speed events. So by that, I mean when we're talking about the suspension compressing, and that's using stroke. So when you're going through a corner, for example, and the bike feels like it's oscillating, that means it's sort of moving, kind of moving up and down a little bit, or when you're pedaling, the rear end is kind of moving, those are low speed events. So if you wanted the bike to feel more, not dead, necessarily, but maybe a little bit more stable and not oscillate so much, you're talking about the low speed circuit, when you're using excessive stroke when you're bottoming and it seems like you're spending a lot of time close to bottom or deeper in the stroke than you like, it would be a combination of the two. But high speed specifically would help limit stroke usage. So by that, I mean, if you're falling out of the tree, as Jim described, you could boost high speed damping and limit the amount of stroke and help slow down the suspension before it hits the bottoming system. So the interplay of those two is, quite literally the, the work that we that we do in the field with our OEMs, when we go testing with them is trying to find a balance between controlling their bottoming resistance, so that they don't, you know, obviously, don't break anything. And then they feel they can jump out of the tree and land in a controlled way, while at the same time, giving them the ability to go over these small breaking bumps, and feel comfortable enough. So the interplay of both of those adjusters is part of the solution for fixing those harshness or too much movement problems.
Jens Staudt:Without diving down into the rabbit hole on what exactly happens in the suspension. When you adjust that, could you say that, if you run more compression damping, that bike will be harder or more exhausting to ride in comparison, when you run less.
Unknown:Not necessarily. And that's one of the funny things about working in suspension is a lot of times, if you don't have enough compression in the suspension, it actually feels incredibly harsh. And the reason is, if you don't have enough control, you'll, when you compress the suspension, it'll be very, very easy to get to get the suspension to compress a lot. And when you push the suspension down, say you're close to bottoming the suspension out, you have a lot of spring for so the spring is obviously compressed, and it's creating a lot of force. But if you, when you when you're developing suspension, if you add compression, and you can put it in, let's say sophisticated enough, so it doesn't create harshness, it'll actually support the rider higher up in the stroke. And it you know, nine times out of 10, if you do it, right, that actually feels softer. And that's one of the things that makes that keeps suspension kind of as a black art is it's counterintuitive. So if you're feeling like your suspension is harsh, and your adjusters are, are closed, or are turned in from from the middle position, then yes, you probably have too much compression control. But if you're out if your sponge feels harsh and your gestures are full open, chances are that you don't have enough control in your suspension and you're too easily using the stroke. So limiting that it's actually quite magical when you get it in there, right, because the rider comes back believes that the suspension is softer, and you tell them that you've made it stiffer. And it's difficult to understand. And you can tell by the look on people's faces when you describe it to them. But it's absolutely true that it depends on the circumstances. But come for more compression damping can actually feel softer
Jens Staudt:as a tiny takeaway from that. If you run this the compression damping very open, the suspension is more willing to actually give travel yes in in cooperation with the Terran under events that happening and you are deeper into the stroke. We had this example of a syringe at the beginning of the podcast when you press it it it will get harder at the end of the stroke. So when you when you're when your suspension is working more deeper into the travel, it's harder.
Unknown:Exactly. And that's typically what happens. The spring absorbs energy but then it tries to give that all that energy right back to you where the damper will help absorb that. So what you're looking for is a balance between a You're buying energy with the spring and absorbing and kind of dissipating it with the damper. So that you're getting the most effective use out of the travel that you have. without going too far. Exactly. Going back to your syringe example, picking up on what Jim was saying is, when you first push on that syringe, it's quite easy to move, that's the idea with adding compression, is you want to help the damper stay up in the stroke. And because it takes distance for that syringe to start creating force. By that I mean, you have to push the plunger in that distance that you move his suspension stroke that you're giving up. But if you back it up with some compression damping, damping doesn't take stroke to generate force. This is this is this is a rabbit hole, but it's velocity sensitive. So you can have it show up earlier in the stroke. And, and coupled with the spring, like Jim was saying balance the way that the system's working out, we just encountered this in some testing with a bike manufacturer, we were riding a specific shock tune, and it felt pretty harsh. And the thought was, well, maybe there's too much compression damping. And what we determined was that there was not enough compression damping. And the suspension was compressing far into the stroke, and it was coming up against that wall of spring. So by adding some compression damping, we were able to hold the bike up higher earlier in the stroke and prevent it from hitting that really high spring force that gets generated as you get so deep into the stroke.
Jens Staudt:We want to cover more of a basic or beginner approach on this podcast by all these explanations in how you hitting the wall and how hard the spring will actually get. It sounds like that progression is actually a bad thing.
Unknown:Not necessarily. Again, it comes down to balance.
Jens Staudt:And we have the possibility to adjust the progression of the suspension
Unknown:Yes, with what's called a volume spacer. So what that would do is you you put this part inside of the air spring, and it makes the air spring ramp up more steeply. Now going back to your comment about progression being bad progressions necessary in order to slow you down as you start using all of your stroke without progression, it would be very, very difficult to build up enough forces to allow you to jump out of the tree without fully fully bottoming out in a quite violent way. So progression is a good thing. And it's a positive thing. It just can't be the only thing controlling your compression stroke
Jens Staudt:for a very beginner rider who might is concerned to totally messing something up. Is this possible? Can a setup be so wrong that there will be a damage to to part of the bike or something like that?
Unknown:No, I think the only thing would be is if you didn't have enough air pressure and you're just bottoming out and you rode that way for a long time, which would be incredibly uncomfortable. I think you might be exhausted before you got to the point where you're hurt something. But no, I think that the any anybody riding a bike that was in a danger zone or something might fail, it would be very, very strange for someone to choose that for further setup. So if it's if it's, if it's this way, if it's set up so poorly that something's going to break, it would be incredibly uncomfortable. And that the basically the suspension of sending signals, hey, you know, to change my adjustment. So the the fear of breaking something for the regular guy playing around with those knobs, I wouldn't really be concerned about that. Now, having said that, we have seen setups that were so bad that there was repeated super hard bottoming, and that's really hard on the frame. And, you know, eventually if you just keep riding your bike like that you could cause potentially cause damage to the frame, just through fatigue. But it takes a lot. And as Sergio mentioned, for the for the setup to be that off. Usually you're going to have other symptoms like your pedals or just constantly slamming into the ground. You know, if you're if you're that low on spring rate, the bikes gonna be riding so low, that it's, it's just going to be hitting stuff.
Jens Staudt:So as a takeaway, we could still encourage everybody out there to get a tiny look into the manual setup set correctly and then start playing around with knobs.
Unknown:Exactly. I think I think we think about it this way. We spend a lot of time the engineers spend a lot of time developing incredibly sophisticated circuits for these oil flows, these adjuster knobs and the creation of damping inside a mountain bike and you compare one damper to the next and each One of them is kind of an engineering masterpiece, let's say. So it would be a shame to, you know, buy your mountain bike with this capability and not exercise it. But it's one of those things where it does take playing around with what those adjusters do an understanding it for what is better for you. And what's difficult is, there's so many different very variations in terrain, that each different condition, for example, we tested with Pivot and Arizona, those conditions are incredibly different from Santa Cruz. And each one of those locations to get the best ride out of your bike would take some different adjustments. So I would encourage people to get familiar with those and optimize it because you're not seeing the true potential of the vehicle, unless you've optimized your suspension setup. And it is a little intimidating. But I think if you if the the beginner guy approaches it, by just playing with one circuit at a time, and going one direction, and seeing what that feels like moving it the other direction, seeing what that feels like over the same terrain, that's a pretty straightforward way of getting familiar with those, but to not, to not get familiar with them and understand, I think that you're compromising what your bike could actually do and is fully capable of one of the difficulties with suspension, I think is consumers nowadays are kind of used to buying a product and learning from it, you know that you buy a new spark smartphone, and you don't necessarily need to read a manual or get instruction on it, you can start using it immediately. And kind of intuitively, decide how you need to use it and determine what you need to do to get the reaction you want. But with suspension, it's a very technical product. And it won't necessarily give the right results or give the results that you expect from a change that you make, unless you kind of do some research. So I always say, you know, it's best to to look at what the bike manufacturer recommends as a starting point. And start with your SEC setup. First. Most bike manufacturers do have recommended rebound settings. And if not, you can go to ride fox.com. And in the owner's manual sections, for each product, there are recommended set starting settings as well. So that at least kind of gets you in the ballpark. But to send a bike out on a test ride without at least doing a basic sag and rebound adjustment is kind of the equivalent of sending a bike out with flat tires, it's not really representative of what the bike should feel like. And for me just years working on the sales side and working with bike manufacturers and even at some consumer events, I think the biggest issue that I see is too much sag, and then rebound set too slow. So you know if if consumers, if riders would go out and kind of do the basic settings set up according to manufacturer recommendations, and then rebound setting according to manufacturer recommendations. That's half the battle there. And then as Sergio mentioned, you can find a section a trail and just ride it over and over trying different settings. And, you know, see what's good and what, what doesn't work as well. Yeah, Jim's absolutely right with that we encounter people in the field when we go testing and we go testing my destinations, and then people will come by and ask him some questions. Believe it or not nine times out of 10 we set sag, we set the adjusters to the to the recommended either by either from the bike manufacturer or from Fox, and they're having a better ride. So we call that home. So if you ever feel like you get lost out there, you always do have which I'm described as the fox website, or if you're writing a Pivot Pivot has some information as well to get you back home. So the the cool thing is, is you can try these things and it's not fatal because they're just little knobs and pressure adjustments to find your way back home, but it is true that we do find people that for example, they went to to check where their adjusters were on their fork and their shock and they didn't put them back in the original position. So they're closed and they're suffering from from performance, some bad performance and they're not sure because they think that the adjusters are in the the original position. So it's like having a trail map or GPS or or, or you know, a drone following you around that you can venture out into the woods but be sure that you can find your way back home so I again encourage people to to exercise those adjusters and find optimal, and a lot of times, we also find that two riders that are really, really good friends, they'll carry around the same settings I'll be at one guy could be six to 210 pounds, and another guy could be 531 50. And those would be very, very different settings. So I'll be it, I would encourage you to try different configurations, I think the message to leave with beginning writers is to get the best out of your bicycle, to get the best speed, the best comfort, the best ride, it is a little bit of an exploration and it's very, very specific to your conditions and your riding style. So don't buy into the fast guy on the trail runs the setting. So if I want to be fast, I need to ride those settings. That's not necessarily true. Because what makes each individual fast is a little bit unique. Based on their skill set and how they ride.
Jens Staudt:There's nothing more to add to that, than was a perfect description. Especially when when you when you brought up the point with people asking for advice or approaching you edited event and saying, Okay, I want to have the sitting of this and that writer, how you can know what people actually need. It's not that there's like this gold solution of the perfect five clicks here, seven clicks there, this amount of psi.
Unknown:Yeah, I see that a lot where there's a demand for all the adjustments, and as complex as possible and the most fine tuning available. But then people want you to tell them what their exact perfect setting is. And that that's the difficult part. What what is perfect for one rider is terrible for another rider. And what is perfect for one trail might not work as well on a different trail, even for the same writer. So it's not that you necessarily need to optimize your suspension for every single trail. That's what World Cup writers and AWS writers, that's what they do. But for a regular, you know, sport type writer who goes out and wants to enjoy riding, you just need to find a setup that works pretty well for all systems or all trails. The suspension system is going to be kind of a compromise for one setting versus another or rain versus dry. And you don't necessarily need to think about it constantly as you're writing. Unfortunately, for me in the career that I have, it's hard for me to ride without thinking about exactly what the suspension is doing it every second. But for the average rider, a basic sex setup and rebound setup, according to Recommendations is a really good starting point. And then you can experiment from there. Exactly when we go and we work these vehicles with the OEMs. It is that mid range adjuster, average air spring, that turns out to be a pretty darn good ride from all of the other things that we've done. Now, picking off some of the things that we're talking about earlier. The the search for for setting is something that Mike's my experience comes from Supercross and motocross racing. And so working with those riders, and those are top level riders, just like World Cup downhill riders, for example, AWS writers, is one of the things that's funny is working with these guys that are some of the fastest riders in the world, they come up to you. And they ask you the same thing, even though they've been writing since they were three years old, is what's the best setting for me? And my answer always is, I don't know, we need to go find it together. Because like Jim said, at that level, we're adjusting for every single change of condition. And to be quite honest, we don't know what the writer needs. What we're looking at in that is what we're looking at when we're working with those guys. Are they comfortable? Are we tapping into their potential as a writer. And because we have a stopwatch, obviously, we're monitoring time. But it's that experience that leads us to really fine tune the suspension in the development phase, to create a setting that is global, trying to make a setting that if you if you ride in Arizona, you come out to Santa Cruz, you can still have a good time. And to Jim's point, that's our goal, we set it up. So if the decision, you buy your bike, you don't want to play with the clickers. That's fine. It's just a tool you have available to you. But I don't think that you're going to have a bad ride necessarily. But now if you're competing with your friend and you want to go faster than him and he's normally quicker than you, you might be able to create some advantages by playing around with the clickers. So it certainly is something that is up to you to kind of play with. One of the techniques we use is called bracketing and that's where you you take your basic setup And then you change one adjuster by a noticeable amount and ride the section. So let's say you take, you take your, your low speed rebound, and you open it up by four clicks. And then you ride the section and you kind of note, what did you feel? Well, the traction was really good, but it felt a little loose in the corners. You know, I'm not sure if I like it or not. And then you think to yourself, well, was that better or worse than what my previous setting was. And if it was better, but it's not quite, it feels like you went too far, then you just go back by half. So we went, we move the rebound adjuster by four clicks, let's pull it back to two clicks. And you rewrite it, and you take your notes there, okay, that was better. But, you know, I'm not sure if I went the right way or not. So then maybe you go back, one more click, and you split the difference. So by doing that, you can kind of zero in on what the perfect setting is for you. And that trail and that condition. So I liken it to the when you go to the eye doctor, and they, you know, they, you look through the, the lenses at the the chart on the wall, and they change the they change the, the lens, and they say, okay, is that better or worse, and if it's better than to go the next level. And if it's worse, then you pull it back halfway. So it's the same thing with bracketing your settings, you make this big enough that you can feel it. And if it's bad, and you want to keep going, then you make another change in that direction. If it's worse, then you pull it back halfway, and see if that's perfect. Exactly. I want to key on on something that you said Jim is word compromise. And so always when it comes to suspension settings, what you'll find if you start playing around with it, like maybe you've by changing your adjusters, you've improved the position in a certain you improve the performance in a certain area, chances are, you're going to maybe take away from other areas. And that's always the game with suspension is if you have if you're trying to optimize cornering, and the trail you're riding has 16 corners, well, then you would show that that's probably more comfortable if you get your corners dialed but you write a trail that has half as many and a lot of straight, choppy sections, chances are that there's a different configuration that would be optimal for that. But there's always a price to pay when you make a change. And that's adds to some of the complexity of what you're doing. But it's really boils down to a choice is the most important thing controlling corners, the way I'm jumping the field on small chop, again, in the bracketing way that Jim describes, we break each of those segments down and play with the adjusters to figure out what is the what is the best compromise for the particular trail that we're working on. It also helps to not focus on one thing too much. And just focus on how is the bike riding? And that's what I always tell my customers when we're testing with them, is try not to tell me what you think the suspension is doing. Tell me what the bike is doing and what you want to change. Yes, yes, yeah. So if you can kind of focus on that. What I like to my rule of thumb, my guess is I know when I have my suspension dialed when I ride the trail, and I'm not really thinking about it, there's nothing that's really irritating me. It's just the bike goes. And we're cool.
Jens Staudt:Let me try to summarize all of this information. So if you get your new bike, it's a new bike day, hopefully Pivot, you set up your sack by looking at your manuals of the bike, or your sag indicator, your manual of the Fox fork. And then you look at the rebound starting point settings, you dial in your clicks, you count them. And then you could either try to set your compression to the recommendations we use or you set them to the middle like Sergio pointed out. Is this pretty much it and then you go for ride.
Unknown:Yeah, I think so. That's what we had talked about. Yeah, I would say we set the sag to manufacture recommendations, which is usually 25 to 30% of the stroke for shocks, and 15 to 20% of the travel for forks. So if we use a Pivot Switchblade as an example that's a 55 millimeter stroke shock. So with the rider on the bike you would want Pivot I think Pivot recommends 30% sag, so you would want about 16 millimeters of sag as measured on the shock. And then on a fork with 160 millimeter travel that the bike uses. You would want anywhere From 24 to 32 millimetres of sag, and that gets your spring setup. And then for rebound, you just, you know, set it so that the suspension returns quickly but doesn't have a topping outfield. In general you just want the the rebound to be set fast enough that the suspension returns to ride height, but without having a topping out sound or topping out feeling. And that should get you pretty good.
Jens Staudt:Perfect. So and then just try to fiddle with the knobs and do the bracketing idea you mentioned before and then enjoy your ride. It's that simple. Okay, then thank you for your time guys. And hopefully we will help some people out there to have a better time on their rides. Thank you. Alright, thank you. Thanks for letting me summarize this. To get really basic straight, you set your sag to define your right height, then adjust the rebound accordingly to the air pressure and then you set your compression settings to the recommendations of the manufacturer or to the middle and on the trail. You should always feel encouraged to fill a little bit with the knobs and dials to see and figure out what you actually really like.