Posts
2171
Joined
2/1/2011
Location
Oceano, CA
US
Edited Date/Time
4/5/2020 9:34pm
My first mountain bike was fully rigid. Those Farmer Johns did mad work to tame the terrain. Then I ordered a GT Avalanche with a bad assed double, super, triple clamp Pro Flex! Then I was told that because my new bike was an XL, the super fork wouldn't fit. Something about steer tube lengths or some shit. What ever. So I was stuck with some new on the market Judy contraption. Cool, I guess. I'll take what I can get.That Judy came with a plastic bodied damper which, like all of the rest, died within the first week due to the elasticity of the plastic body. So I got the warranty replacement that was a set of aluminum bodied cartridges which I proceeded to install in our living room apartment at culinary school. Thus beginning my suspension tuning career. After years of Rock Shox. I moved on to Manitou, where I found that if one removed the last and biggest shim from a Dorado, because they were too harsh, and put it on the stack of one of their single crowns, reduced to 80mm, it worked great for street and dirt jumping. The dream. to this day, I've never paid anyone to work on my suspension. I got one free Push Job on an old Fox of mine, but I've never paid for work. Given that the last fork rebuild that I've done was on a second hand 26", 32mm Boxxer WC more than a decade ago, i cannot in any way call myself a professional or in any way knowledgeable about modern suspension.
But given the high prices and hassle of shipping one's suspension components off for work, or waiting even longer for the LBS to do the same, more and more riders are doing more and more of their own suspension maintenance.
How about we have this space to discuss and probably argue about how to properly maintain our suspension systems? Lowers and air can service techniques? The best fluids? Whatever! I've been out of the game for long enough that I've never had to replace a foam ring, but hopefully this will provide a safe place to discuss all of their intricacies.
Game On!!?
But given the high prices and hassle of shipping one's suspension components off for work, or waiting even longer for the LBS to do the same, more and more riders are doing more and more of their own suspension maintenance.
How about we have this space to discuss and probably argue about how to properly maintain our suspension systems? Lowers and air can service techniques? The best fluids? Whatever! I've been out of the game for long enough that I've never had to replace a foam ring, but hopefully this will provide a safe place to discuss all of their intricacies.
Game On!!?
CcDb gets by due to the very small shaft but I think anything with a 1/2” dia or bigger shaft would really benefit from it
The megneg is the real deal, but it took a lot of back to back runs, strap wrenches, rubber bands, volume spacers, cock....i mean shock pumps..... but it did work well.
My 2020 bike I kept it stupidly heavy and simple, DHX2 with Cane Creek progressive spring, F36 up front with the underated fitgrip damper and a vorsprung smashpot installed. It's quiet, virtually maintenance free and plush AF.
In the Super Deluxe air, it's action is 2 fold, it mechanically provide negative force via the spring itself and also reduce negative chamber volume increasing it's compression ratio (again more negative force).
You could remove the counter measure spring to enlarge the negative chamber and it would indeed reduce suspension rate but would also increase preload significantly, a balancing act RS had to do designing the shock.
One day I will test them both on the dyno and know for sure
I have the Cascade Components LT link on the way to me along with a CCDB IL Coil though. The megneg was just the gateway drug to wanting even more out of the suspension. Hopefully the link and coil give me what I'm looking for.
That been said. Had both acs3 and smashpot and the vorsprung solution with hydraulic bottom out is much better
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