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Edited Date/Time
5/9/2024 6:53am
The 2024 Fort William World Cup Downhill really opened a can of questions with Elite Men's, Women's and Junior Men's winners on suspension with some kind of electronic valve control activated manually or automatically. Of the top 5, 4 Elite Men had some kind of electronic suspension componentry. This discussion doesn't have to be about DH only, so have at it with talks of all things #SquishTech
I'll kick it off with my take on a great question by @hamncheez2003
Tune your suspension only for sector 2, dial it there, don't compromise on anything else, then the buttons firm things up for the end of the track? Most others had to compromise between these two severely different parts of the track, slowing them down in sector 2?
This is in relation to the timing data, that shows Sector 2 (and then 3) as the most important and where the podium was largely decided, and the fact that sector 4 and 5, the flattest where lockout should gain time were very similar between electronic and non electronic pilots, and that from the timing, 4 and 5 didn't determine the race (in fact Benoit Coulages was fastest on both).
I think is a great question, the issue is that riders will always tune their setup for the toughest sections, as it has almost always been where time gain is most important.
I think the riders would pick a setup that optimises the grip and support for the rough sections and just pedal as hard as they can on the flat.
The issue is with only 1 race and 5 splits of data, it's very hard for us to figure anything out, as Loic and Finn and Troy are always near the top of the timing boards, and maybe the new Canyon bike (and not the suspension) helped Luca get there.
We'll wait and see, but I do think it provides some advantage, but currently we can't tell if it's the new prototype frames, or fancy electronics.
That's actually a simple question to ask Bruni in an interview. Don't know if he'd answer it, but the next person to interview Bruni should ask.
I feel like we are going to see riders overshoot the tables in the bikepark section at Leogang even further than before if these electronic settings are as effective as they appear to be
Many people keep commenting that these systems are all lockouts, but is that a little simplistic? Current available Flight Attendant is pretty much a lockout, but this one seems to have some sort of controller. Is it possible that this is something related to FA but new?
Maybe the controller switches the setup or damping and there isn't necessarily the same lockout (or the second button enables a lockout). That would make it more similar to what Bruni and Öhlins seem to have.That could eventually be an option for some sort of Flight Attendant DH or 2.0 version.
Don't forget about fatigue: soft squish in the gnar might save your arms for the bottom sections.
But yeah, not knowing anything about either system, I'd speculate in most cases it's just messing with compression damping. Most likely a lockout or firm(er) platform.
How about suspension temperature changes during a WC DH run? I keep having thoughts about that, maybe some of them are adjusting for how the dampers change during a full run. Usually it is windy and not necessarily blazing hot at the top of these WC tracks, yet at the bottom the suspension components are VERY hot. A carefully choreographed damper change during a run to maintain consistency seems plausible.
Looks like Moi Moi and Kasper from the YT team are running FA in Finale..
Link as I can’t work out how to embed..
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6vYxJlMh0T/?igsh=MWxucHE3Nm1hM2ZxYg==
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6vYAjgsIr5/?igsh=MW10ZzVxdXI2dXk2dg==
It was interesting to watch that on the motorway at Fort Bill, the ones who were making up times were the ones catching the backsides of the jumps properly, some came steaming in and couldn't squash hard enough, went to flat, and you'd see them lose 0.3 by the end of the sector.
Some have theorized that the Ohlins shock is using a motorized sprindex system, so change the spring rate via an actuator and motor. This would be very different to the damping changes the other brands have come up with so far.
This is Ohlins latest semi active electric suspension in the moto world.
https://www.ohlins.com/about-us/news/smartec3-honda-fireblade
"The system also enables riders to choose, on the fly, among four semi-active suspension algorithms – Sport, Track, Rain and Manual – to address changing conditions and/or preferences. The system includes Öhlins’ state-of-the-art Objective Base Tuning Interface (OBTi), which allows riders to easily adjust for different vehicle characteristics such as brake support, weight transfer or support during initial acceleration, and fine tuning of cornering grip, to name a few. Taking inspiration from MotoGP rear ride height devices, the updated acceleration parameter provides tuning of weight transfer in initial acceleration to enable enhanced performance through a lowered center of gravity"
There has to be much more than just a lockout going on with the Ohlins stuff.
Pretty sure fa dh allows you to adjust low speed compression to preset settings via a motor. Potentially hsc as well. I expect the next step will be to add motors to the bottom of the fork to allow for this with rebound. But there is far less benefit to multiple rebound settings where riders are will be adjusting one to two clicks at most.
If you have a motorized Sprindex system, I think you'd want to be able to adjust rebound settings on the fly to match. Rebound speed is matched to spring rate, and if you're changing the spring rate enough to be noticeable, the rebound is potentially going to feel REALLY different.
Yeah it would be pretty severe to go up 100lbs with the same rebound.
I wish I had a sprindex to test it, find a motor way and try blasting with the same rebound and see if it's manageable.
I think a bigger issue is not being able to change fork pressure, it would be very weird to still have a "soft" fork and stiff rear, the balance would be wack. It's why I'm inclined to think it's not true, and all the adjustments are just damping based.
Re Ohlins Moto press release, all that marketing jargon and be explained with just damping.
I think a big reason the Ohlin electronic suspension would work so well, is that Ohlins products are inherently high damped, like almost twice the damping force of Fox products, and quite a bit more than Rockshox, so with the remotes the changes in setting is much much higher than any equivalent Fox change, since Fox rely on their airspring (or coil) so much to provide support.
Maybe this tech will finally force Fox to include more maximum damping out of the box?
Put a piston with a spindle in it and a motor attached to it into the fork at the top and you have a variable volume which would, besides changing the ramp-up, also change the base pressure and make the fork stiffer overall.
Oh good point, and in dual crowns there's actually so much space in the stanchion that you can do this easily.
Get on it primoz! Threaded rod and servo motor, here we go!
Do we have any shots of their Ohlins forks to see what's on them?
So we can do, servo on compression adjuster, servo on rebound adjuster, threaded rod piston servo on air spring. Full programmable suspension setup.
Then just puzzle the sectors and settings, boom, 3 different settings optimized for 3 different areas.
I need someone to finance all of these ideas so I can quit my job and have enough time to do them 😂
Just a thought experiment, but what about swapping the dog bone link under the specialized to a pneumatic actuator. You could have an electronic valve to dump air and lower the rear end like a motogp bike. At the same time it would most likely change the leverage as well, so you could have a bike that's lower and firmer for the smooth bike park sections. To get extra tricky, the downtube could be used as an air reservoir to reinflate the actuator and bring the bike back to normal height.
That is basically what Shapeshifter on the Canyon Strive.
Beat me to it.
But its also kinda like the old Kona Magic Link. If you slightly adjust the compression ratio, you get your increased (effective) spring rate and increased rebound damping at the same time
I would guess Fox product can be revalved to be as heavily damped as Ohlins. I don’t know if there’s a difference in the reaction speeds of the damping circuits though because that’s very important as you increase damping imo. The vital podcast with Fox from the launch of the new forks hinted that they are changing their philosophy around damping. Very good listen for anyone that hasn’t gotten to it yet!
More damping force out of the box sounds exactly what the GripX2 is doing. I’ve heard less spring rate and more compression is the new set up.
Wait, I thought we were all supposed to use less damping? Remember when Jordy and Minaar were talking about how faster rebound and less compression was the new thing? Wasn't that like 2 years ago?
Yeah, and theyre wrong lol.
Fox went all in on light compression tunes, massive amounts of tokens in forks to generate support and huge spring forces to prevent bottom out. BK used to run 7 spacers in his 40.
Its only now when they're starting to realise that you need a balance, and they had it wrong. The reason Ohlins came in with such high damping is because that's standard in motorsports, whereas for some reason, MTB used to have very low damping relative to other disciplines.
But Fox is HUGE in motor sports!
I will say, I love my EXT Era fork, best fork I've ridden, but man its heavily damped. Despite being plush off the top like a true coil, on long, big descents with moto bumps in it, your hands get worn out.
I have yet to ride a fork that has high levels of HSC and that still feels supple off the top/reading small to mid-sized bumps. That said, I haven't been on the new X2 damper yet. But it still doesn't make sense that it could be heavily HSC damped and still provide super quick responsiveness to chatter in the trail. If anything, I would think position sensitive HSC is where it's at. No HSC until 1/3 of the way into the travel--similar to what the Rockshox Vivid airshock is doing
Not saying my method is correct, but I’ve gotten good results by tuning compression for mid to large sized bumps and tuning tire pressure and casing for smaller, more chattering bumps. Rebound gets tuned to be as fast as possible while still feeling controlled and most importantly for me, the shock and the fork need to feel balanced throughout the travel. Also worth noting that I like a lot of hold-up under hard braking. On 160ish mm bikes with Rockshox stock valving, this method has generally has me end up with compression between fully closed and 3 clicks out, rebound between 1 and 4 clicks from being fully open, and volume spacers vary with linkage leverage ratio. Long winded way of saying I’m very on board with firmer damping from the factory.
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