Riding style HT+FS

Thewaylander

To be honest I agree with DIY. I have gone over the bars on a LT HT before due to the front hugely dipping down with nothingfrom the back..
Hated it as a set up passionately

Northwind

Thewaylander wrote:

To be honest I agree with DIY. I have gone over the bars on a LT HT before due to the front hugely dipping down with nothingfrom the back..

But if you're dropping onto the front hard enough to drive straight through the travel, the back won't be doing anything anyway- the suspension response of landing a drop on the nose or hitting a root or rock on a really steep descent is exactly the same on a FS or HT because it's a front end reaction in both cases. If you're landing on both wheels and being thrown by the dive you've landed badly, is all.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what DIY is trying to say

Thewaylander

Northwind wrote:

Thewaylander wrote:

To be honest I agree with DIY. I have gone over the bars on a LT HT before due to the front hugely dipping down with nothingfrom the back..

But if you're dropping onto the front hard enough to drive straight through the travel, the back won't be doing anything anyway- the suspension response of landing a drop on the nose or hitting a root or rock on a really steep descent is exactly the same on a FS or HT because it's a front end reaction in both cases. If you're landing on both wheels and being thrown by the dive you've landed badly, is all.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what DIY is trying to say

Think mechanics mate.

We are landing on a down slope yarp? from maybe a rock/drop or so on. as we land the front fork blows through the travel if you going at speed maybe not all but with a longer travel fork will still be alot, with a steep incline below you. With full sus both shocks would absorb the hit, The bike roughly going through F+B travel evenly keeping your weight evenly distributed.

With a long travel front fork that doesn't happen over you go. If you haven't been to a place with steep hills with drops you may not have experienced this but i certainly have, and you don't get the problem on 100mm HT or full sussers.

peter413

Thewaylander wrote:

Northwind wrote:

Thewaylander wrote:

To be honest I agree with DIY. I have gone over the bars on a LT HT before due to the front hugely dipping down with nothingfrom the back..

But if you're dropping onto the front hard enough to drive straight through the travel, the back won't be doing anything anyway- the suspension response of landing a drop on the nose or hitting a root or rock on a really steep descent is exactly the same on a FS or HT because it's a front end reaction in both cases. If you're landing on both wheels and being thrown by the dive you've landed badly, is all.

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding what DIY is trying to say

Think mechanics mate.

We are landing on a down slope yarp? from maybe a rock/drop or so on. as we land the front fork blows through the travel if you going at speed maybe not all but with a longer travel fork will still be alot, with a steep incline below you. With full sus both shocks would absorb the hit, The bike roughly going through F+B travel evenly keeping your weight evenly distributed.

With a long travel front fork that doesn't happen over you go. If you haven't been to a place with steep hills with drops you may not have experienced this but i certainly have, and you don't get the problem on 100mm HT or full sussers.

Like Northwind said. Probably just a bad landing. The forks are obviously going to go through teir travel but you should be able to compensate with your body position

Thewaylander

Uh no.. I can land plenty fine from many many years of street mate...

Long travel forks can throw your weight fwd hard on steep sections and lead to unseating. Something i haven't experienced ever on 100mm<HT and FS.

peter413

Thewaylander wrote:

Uh no.. I can land plenty fine from many many years of street mate...

Long travel forks can throw your weight fwd hard on steep sections and lead to unseating. Something i haven't experienced ever on 100mm<HT and FS.

But I bet you don't ride the FS and HT in the same way do you.

You have to ride bikes differently just like you can't ride a DH bike in the same way as a XC one

bails87

Thewaylander wrote:

If you haven't been to a place with steep hills with drops you may not have experienced this but i certainly have, and you don't get the problem on 100mm HT or full sussers.

I'm pretty sure Northwind rode his Soul down the Fort Bill DH run.

Thewaylander

Indeed... I know i have ridden many bikes in 17 years of biking from fully rigid through 150mm HT, FS stumpies, Marin FS, up to an SX trail for weighty huge travel at points.

I've tried alot of bikes and fully aware of riding them differently. I don't need to be told i don't know how to ride one as to a degree i can ride them all(rusty on the rigid work these days). As from all that experience the Long travel hard tail required alot of comprimises in riding style to acheive some things.. (like not head butting the floor on rocky steep decents)

There not confidence inspiring on the downs in my opinion and just feel horribly unbalanced. but people are entitled to there opinion on that. This one is mine

Northwind

Thewaylander wrote:

The bike roughly going through F+B travel evenly keeping your weight evenly distributed.

With a long travel front fork that doesn't happen over you go. If you haven't been to a place with steep hills with drops you may not have experienced this but i certainly have, and you don't get the problem on 100mm HT or full sussers.

So you're talking about a hard landing to transition then rather than to a flat or a nose landing? Being thrown forwards is more likely to be to do with not absorbing the landing and being thrown around by the impact, the actual shift of weight distribution when the forks dive isn't enormous and isn't hard to deal with.

I really don't think this is what DIY was talking about though since he was referring to front end grip and getting weight back- but landing a drop like this is less about weight distribution and more about how you absorb the impact and ride it out. Just hanging your weight back on a drop isn't a good idea as you know.

It depends what you mean by long travel HT of course, if you mean like a Surge with Lyrics or something then yep, that's a very specialist tool and is more of a compromise. I'm old so 140mm is long travel to me But then set up appropriately it takes a lot of impact to drive through a big fork- I've seen a few people who end up running the fork really soft since the riding they do doesn't really use the travel otherwise, and as a result the bike's all over the place and ridiculously over-active but that's a setup issue.

Thewaylander

Set up is possible

But then most forks i've seen i would say are set up to soft as they don't go through there travel. :P

On sag alone on a 140mm fork you have between 1/4-1/3 sag depending your general riding thats between 35mm and 46mm off sag on the fork. so even a fairly smooth landing would prob hit you through 100mm of travel (at least if you have the compression set up well) thats a huge range of movement when the back isn't moving too. When riding this style of bike i just don't think they handle in a balanced manner and tend to dip to much up front.

The old adage springs to mind for me and alot of people with sus. you should really come close or actually bottom a fork once or twice on your hardest trail you ride.. or your simply not using the travel.

The long travel HT bike I tried was 150mm and with a few people i know who tried it. it was our most hated bike set up ever

Northwind

Thewaylander wrote:

Set up is possible

But then most forks i've seen i would say are set up to soft as they don't go through there travel. :P

On sag alone on a 140mm fork you have between 1/4-1/3 sag depending your general riding thats between 35mm and 46mm off sag on the fork. so even a fairly smooth landing would prob hit you through 100mm of travel (at least if you have the compression set up well) thats a huge range of movement when the back isn't moving too. When riding this style of bike i just don't think they handle in a balanced manner and tend to dip to much up front.

See, I think that's where we really disagree, I don't think the 100mm of travel from sagged to bottomed is a huge amount of difference, because my legs still have a load more. If I bend my knees to drop my weight 100mm the effect is almost the same as having suspension do the same (not identical of course)

I don't really like really long travel HTs myself, 140mm works lovely on a Soul but I've not ridden anything longer that I really got on with. But that's just my riding probably, it's not all that appropriate for what I do. Some people seem to love them but I don't feel the need for that much fork much of the time, and when i do I'd use the hemlock instead.

diy

I agree you can use your body to compensate, although I think it would be hard to get the same benefit that 6" of rear travel has on the cog. I wasn't talking about landings btw. Imagine a steep set of forest steps and that is probably closer to what I meant.

The last thing you want when you are bouncing down a rocky decent is to have your wheelbase get shorter under compression. e.g.

of course what we really need on LT HTs is telelever front suspension

Northwind

diy wrote:

Imagine a steep set of forest steps and that is probably closer to what I meant.

I thought that might be what you were thinking of. How long a fork are you meaning here, is the other question?

Thewaylander wrote:

The old adage springs to mind for me and alot of people with sus. you should really come close or actually bottom a fork once or twice on your hardest trail you ride.. or your simply not using the travel.

True that... But then how often are you riding on your hardest trails? I bottomed out my forks pretty nicely a couple of times at Kirroughtree over the weekend but I don't think I'm ever likely to do it on my local trails. But some people take that idea too much to heart, I've heard people say "You should bottom out your suspension every ride or it's wasted." Unless every ride involves decent sized hits that's just silly, to do that on many trails you'd have to run too soft.

I think this catches some long fork people, they hate to think they're not hardcore enough to use all 160mm of travel So they run them soft, and end up bobbing around like a sofa just so they can use the travel even on simple trails. Then, if they ever do want to actually use their monstrous fork, they'll blow through the travel instantly and bottom out like they've been fired from a cannon. It's funny to see though.

diy

I don't think it is just about fork length - I think its the whole package - If you look at bikes like the crush, then they are ok, because they enable you to maintain a low cog, but the 2010 P7 for example still has a 140mm front on a fairly XC oriented frame.

I think these are fine for whippets, but someone who likes to keep their weight forward to aid grip will find the rear pretty lively when the front is squashed down on a decent.

popstar

I applause DIY for graphics. And right spot on conversation about weakest link of HT. after reading opinions it proves FS riders are cheaters and lazy (in terms of pure flow) ! YEAHH

Northwind

diy wrote:

I don't think it is just about fork length - I think its the whole package - If you look at bikes like the crush, then they are ok, because they enable you to maintain a low cog, but the 2010 P7 for example still has a 140mm front on a fairly XC oriented frame.

True enough, that. Take my Soul, if you bottom it out at 100mm the geometry is identical to if you bottom it out from 140mm. It's a more dramatic change but the end result is the same. So not so much a long fork thing, more just how the bike rides in general, maybe. The Soul's built to work at the shorter travel so it deals well with the compression.

The only real disadvantage I've noticed of running the Soul at 130mm- other than that it's not as good on really steep climbs- is that it wheeltraps a bit more readily, especially on the flat. But on steeps it's still an advantage, and if the fork bottoms I'm no worse off than I would have been with 100mm. And the same's actually true of FS in the same situations.

diy

popstar wrote:

I applause DIY for graphics.

not my graphics - I just found them

Anonymous

I vote for FS over HT unless you dont mind sore arse on the trails

diy

How would full Sus make a difference to how well your saddle fits?

joshtp

diy wrote:

How would full Sus make a difference to how well your saddle fits?

awsome! too true!

Northwind

poiuy1 wrote:

I vote for FS over HT unless you dont mind sore ars* on the trails

I've never had a sore a**e on the trails until this week, my second ride on my new full suss and I was messing about and looped it. Now I feel like I've been bummed by a rhino. Ergo, hardtails are more comfortable.