First time downhill advice please.

Northwind

Yeah, but downhill riding isn't the same as riding downhill.

nwmlarge

slow down the rebound and wind off the compression damping if you have it.

andymc06

I'll be at Aston Hill tomorrow and Cwmcarn on Friday. Say hello if you are about. I'll be on a dark blue trance and wearing a grey ff helmet.

Thanks for the tips

Andy

rockmonkeysc

nwmlarge wrote:

slow down the rebound and wind off the compression damping if you have it.

Don't do this. Winding off the compression will cause your suspension to blow through the travel on big hits and slowing the rebound will stop it recovering between hits so it will squat a bit lower with each hit. I run the rebound quite fast on my DH bike.

ilovedirt

Thewaylander wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

timpop wrote:

Hey there, while you're at it you might want to consider slowing down the rebound on your forks and rear shock a little and take some air out the rear shock to change the angle. I think that'll improve your first time experience. It'll set you back a little (good for descending) and help prevent you bouncing off the jumps too much. Of course that all depends how things are set-up right now.
Have fun.

That all sounds like bad ideas. Slowing rebound means the rear end won't recover between hits and your going to be getting bigger hits than normal so softening the rear shock will result in bottoming out.

In they sound like completely stupid ideas to me... my shocks run pretty quick to absorb the fast repetative hits,

You run less sag on your shock for downhill because it absorbs the small bumps better - around 30% for downhill, 20%ish for XC.

rockmonkeysc

Surely you mean more sag? 30% is about right normally but from experience (I had a Trance X3 for a couple years) the Trance will blow through it's travel a bit quick. It's a bit of a compromise, you will loose small bump sensitivity but you will be bottoming a lot less on big hits. I used to run about 20% - 25% sag on my Trance.

andymc06

Had a cracking couple of days. Thursday at Aston Hill improving skills on drops. Surface to Air is insane! That chalky soil improves the handling skills on the other trails. Friday at Cwmcarn was excellent. The run was more natural than Surface to Air, challenging but do-able. Downhilling is surprisingly physical! Rode the final descent of the Twrch trail at the end and found our trail riding skills had improved a lot. Drove home knackered but happy. Thanks to all for the advice.

nwmlarge

RockmonkeySC wrote:

nwmlarge wrote:

slow down the rebound and wind off the compression damping if you have it.

Don't do this. Winding off the compression will cause your suspension to blow through the travel on big hits and slowing the rebound will stop it recovering between hits so it will squat a bit lower with each hit. I run the rebound quite fast on my DH bike.

on a dh bike you'd be bang on the money

on a 140mm trance it will make all the difference to controlling the bike over what will be the original posters first time over fast braking bumps, they will be on the brakes too hard to worry about big hits

DCR00

nwmlarge wrote:

RockmonkeySC wrote:

nwmlarge wrote:

slow down the rebound and wind off the compression damping if you have it.

Don't do this. Winding off the compression will cause your suspension to blow through the travel on big hits and slowing the rebound will stop it recovering between hits so it will squat a bit lower with each hit. I run the rebound quite fast on my DH bike.

on a dh bike you'd be bang on the money

on a 140mm trance it will make all the difference to controlling the bike over what will be the original posters first time over fast braking bumps, they will be on the brakes too hard to worry about big hits

the travel of the bike makes no difference

Unless you are talking about a larger fork (usually a FR or DH fork), then comp adjust is usually low speed only anyway, and wouldnt effect the performance of the forks over high speed compressions (where the high speed comp is usually fixed)

if you dial out all the compression damping, then hard braking will make the forks dive, taking the bike into the travel, leaving less to absorb the impact of the bumps

Rebound should be set fast enough so that the fork is returning to full travel (minus sag), but is not bucking as a result. That's not dependent on travel or what "style" of riding you are doing. Some do adjust according to conditions, i.e. having a bit more in very muddy conditions, but for most of us mere mortals, having it set up this way is fine. As said above, having too much rebound damping isnt allwoing your forks to perform to its abilities and can result in a very harsh and out of control ride.

I think people sometimes confuse setting up suspension correctly with having a bike that is comfortable.