- Getting your suspension set up correctly
on your mountain bike is vital to get the best performance
out of it, and whilst it's really easy for us
to demonstrate that to you in the workshop,
it doesn't actually show you
what those effects are when you're out on the trail.
So we're here in Alacante, Spain, and we're just gonna make
a few of those major adjustments:
air pressure, air volume, and some damping stuff
just to show you those effects
so you can make sure to get it right at home.
(intense music)
I've connected a shock pump to the bike.
I've got this set up exactly the way I like it
at the moment with 30% sag.
So, I'm running 90 PSI in the fork, currently.
So I'm going to let this down to about 60.
So that should be way too soft for me,
and we can do the same for the rear shock
just to really emphasise how badly a bike can handle
when it's under sprung, okay, so out back again,
I'm running this 30% sag,
almost bang on the nail.
I'm running this at 240 PSIs.
I'm going to take this down to about 190
to get a similar effect, front and rear.
So I'm expecting this bike to have more like 40, 50% sag
with this sort of set up.
So whilst this will feel really nice
on some of these smaller bumps,
as soon as I'm up to a little bit of speed
and start hitting the bigger stuff,
it's actually going to feel quite out of control
because I'm going to be slamming through that travel
way too easily.
Of course, the other effect you have
by running it too soft is as soon as I turn that pitch
down onto a steeper bit of terrain,
the front fork is going to be compressed further,
more often.
So I won't have that support.
Okay, so it's grippy but oh my God, it's getting overcome
quite easily with this stuff.
Way too soft, really.
So the fork does have a good amount of grip when it's soft,
but as you can see here, I've been bottoming out
all the way.
Really on this, you shouldn't be using all that travel
the whole time.
I can actually start to feel some of those hits
through to my hands.
So the fork set up as it is, 60 PSI
on that with no volume spacers, so I'm just smashing
through that travel.
As we've just looked, when you ride downhill
with your bike setup way too soft, it does feel grippy
and it does feel nice on the smaller stuff,
but it gets really overcome very easily
when it starts getting rough.
I was feeling a lot of those bumps straight through
to my hands which completely defeats the purpose
of having that suspension.
Obviously, the suspension is there to isolate
the bumps from the ground for you to ride on.
It's enabled to get the wheels on the ground
as much as possible.
It just didn't feel like I had any sort of element
of control there.
Also, you get a significantly bad effect when climbing.
Although the shock does have a three-position compression
lever on it, even with it fully on the locked out position,
just because of how low the bottom bracket is
because of the amount of sag I'm running,
the bike just handles like a pig.
It's just so low and sluggish.
Even that amount of compression is not going to help
when the bike is not set up with the correct spring weight
for you.
Okay, so we started out with a bike correctly set up,
and I've released the air out of the fork and the shock.
So the fork went down to 60 PSI.
My stock setting with 30% sag was 90 PSI,
so I've jumped this up to 120.
So you get three pretty accurate gauges on it.
Even just putting my weight on the bars now,
it feels so hard, so pretty interesting
to see how this feels, real shock of taking
that from 240 all out to 300 pounds, so this thing,
again, just feels insanely hard.
Okay, so this feels faster but really quite rowdy
because the bike is just skipping over stuff.
I'm not sure I'd want to ride a bike like that all day.
It's quite tiring on your hands because the bumps
are being transmitted through the bars,
but I quite like the way the bike
does skip over the stuff a bit.
Again, that's not really the point of a suspension.
You want it to work and offer you the best of both worlds.
What I want to demonstrate to you now is just how different
the bike can handle and feel to you
with or without volume spacers.
So the fork, for example, with no volume spacers in it
and correctly sprung for me, will still feel a bit supple
at the beginning of the travel just because of the design
of the fork.
It's also going to reach the end of travel a bit easier.
So that's a nice feeling fork, don't get me wrong.
But you can tailor this by having volume spacers in there.
And so, now, the effect of keeping the air pressure the same
and putting volume spacers in there
is that the initial bit of travel is going to become
very, very supple and give you a lot of grip
and real nice feel.
It's going to ramp up slightly through the mid stroke,
which gives you a bit more support.
The bike's going to feel quite composed.
Now, even if I'm not using all the travel
coming through this rocky stuff,
the bike's just gonna sit up quite nicely
and feel supportive, and then towards the end
of the travel, it's going to be significantly harder
to bottom out, again, if you're riding
that sort of terrain with big rock hits or even
big jumps, having volume spaces can make
quite a significant difference to the feel.
This applies to the rear of the bike as well.
So, what I'm gona demonstrate
is riding with no volume spacers.
And then I'm going to put three, front and rear.
We're just gonna monitor this with a GoPro,
just so you can see how different the fork reacts
with the same air pressure.
So, this is the run with 90 PSI in the fork
and no volume spaces.
It felt pretty good, to be fair.
The fork is nice and supple,
but I did end up using all the travel.
I didn't quite bottom out as harshly as I did
on the earlier runs with the softer fork,
but to be honest,
this is rocky but not as rocky as that.
I don't think I should be using all of that travel.
This is where air volume adjustment comes in.
So without having to dramatically change the air pressure
in the fork, I put some volume spacers in.
In theory, I won't be using that much travel
but I'll still have a nice supple ride.
Let's have a look.
Here we go, that's where the volume spacers come in.
I'm going to go for three.
They simply just thread in to the top cap.
Pop that back in.
If you're doing this sort of thing at home
when you're riding, what you want to do is
ride a section of a trail you know really well.
Preferably a rough section of trail to really test
your suspension out but you specifically want it
to be on something you know
because you understand where the bike
should be bottoming out, where it shouldn't be,
when you're going to be jeering out into turns,
things like that.
Makes you understand all the settings
of your suspension fork or shock are doing
a bit better.
There we go, 90 pounds bang on.
That's got three volume spacers in there.
Same air pressure, 90 PSI, so I'm expecting
this to be significantly different,
so let's hit the trail.
So, that felt a lot more familiar to me.
I do like a progressive feeling bike.
It felt nice and active on the small stuff.
It felt significantly more controlled.
It felt like it sat in the mid a lot more.
It felt like the fork with no volume spacers
was working the whole time,
whereas it felt this one just sat up
and enabled me to push off rocks a bit more.
I've not used all of the travel either,
but it didn't feel harsh in doing so.
That is the way I love the suspension to feel.
It's there when I need
that extra, so if I do come down something like this
a little bit too rowdy, I know I've got a little bit
more travel left, just to save me.
So we've discussed the air spring on the bike
and also the air volume adjustment.
We've seen how that reacts differently,
whether it's too soft, too firm, or you're running
no volume spacers or you're running lots of volume spacers.
There's also compression and rebound to talk about.
The compression adjustment commonly found
on forks and shocks is low speed compression.
So this essentially helps stop the fork or shock move
into your body weight.
On the front of the fork here,
you can have some low speed compression
or perhaps if you're climbing up a fire road
or something like that, but it's also really good
if you're running a really steep track
and you find that the fork's diving a bit too much.
You can have some low speed compression
just to help keep the fork up a little bit.
You'd be surprised how much difference that makes.
Of course, if you fully close this,
that's going to feel incredibly harsh.
You need to play around
with this to get your ideal settings.
Fully closed is a great setting to use
if you're on a fire road or even just commuting to work
on a lane road.
Out back though, it's a little bit different.
On this particular shock, you've got
a three-position lever here.
Pretty easy to adjust, it's got an indented action.
At the top, it's the same effect as a fully-closed dial
on the fork.
So it feels like it's almost locked out.
it makes the bike sit up, but if you hit a bump,
the wrist suspension will still work.
The mid setting, slightly less.
And the bottom setting is fully open.
Why are there not two settings?
Most people will want fully closed and fully open, right?
Well, not necessarily so.
Fully open is great because the shock is active,
it's doing its job properly.
Then the fully closed setting, obvious reasons.
But the mid setting is actually, probably
the most useful setting on a big,
all-mountain style bike like this.
The reason for that is when you're climbing off-road,
and you're really digging it,
bottom bracket height on these bikes is quite low.
It can become very easy to clip your pedals on rocks.
If you're running the mid setting, it just sits the bike
up that bit higher, much like the opposite effect.
When descending, you don't want the forks to dive.
Really try and experiment with using that mid setting
when you're climbing on a bike.
You'd be surprised how good it feels.
Rebound is a little bit different
and it's very hard to show.
So rebound controls the rate in which the fork
or the shock extends.
Simply put, if you have too little rebound damping
added to the fork or shock,
then it's just going to be like a pogo stick.
You're not going to have any control.
It will feel really nice to have
a patter-y sort of jumps and bumps.
As soon as you start hitting rough stuff
like this, it's going to be a horrible ride.
And you don't really want that.
And, also, the other issue you have is
if you start hitting jumps
because there's no rebound to control it,
you're basically on a giant spring,
and the inertia of that could actually fire you
and you don't really want to go over the bars.
By having too much rebound damping,
the effect is you're going to get this thing
called pack down.
That's basically when the shock can't extend fast enough
in between hits.
Successively, it gets slower and slower
and slower and slower until there's no travel left to use
and you can't extend properly.
It feels like it's a locked out rear end.
And that is not good at all.
So you need to find a happy medium.
Once you've got those settings right,
just take note of them and you're good to go.
So hopefully, this demonstration
on fork and shock adjustments has cleared things up
for you a little bit.
For a couple more really useful videos,
click down here for how to do those volume spacers
in your fork and shock,
a really good thing to do yourself at home.
Click up here if you want to find out different ways
to use your lockout and how useful that actually is
out on the trail.
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