Front sus question

Southgate

I'm new to mountain biking and I have a hardtail with three settings on the front sus (off, mid, full). I'm pretty sure I'm selecting the setting correctly for everything apart from possibly some climbs. Does anyone have any advice on what setting/s to use when climbing different types of terrain, e.g. rocks, muddy trails, easy stairs etc. I've been generally climbing with the sus on 'off', which, through trial and error, seems to work best (albeit a little harsh at times), but I'd be grateful for any further advice / tips.
Thanks

cooldad

The forks are?

Southgate

Fox 32 Float Factory CTD Air, 100mm

miceden

CTD means "Climb, Trail, Descend" and it also means the travel (100mm) is adjustable on the fly... this mostly applies to "Climb" mode, in this mode you can reduce the amount of travel from 100mm down to whatever yours drops too, I think you can reduce by 20% so your travel becomes 80mm which means your front end lowers by 20mm... which can be quite useful on steep climbs.

To get the forks to lower put it in Climb mode and then press down on the front end so the forks compress, at a certain point they'll hold and wont spring all the way back up to the 100mm travel... to get them back to full travel just turn the switch back to the on position and they'll pop up..... least this is the way DT forks work, I assume Fox has a similar operation

So climb mode for climbing really... but if you prefer the forks locked out then use them that way.

WindyG

CTD on Fox forks is for setting how firm the fork compression will be, Climb is the firmest setting for flat firm ground or climbing it won't 100% lockout but will not move much, Descend is the softest setting for the roughest terrain and downhill and Trail doesn't really sit in the middle of the two but it is the better option for most general riding conditions.

rockmonkeysc

Just put it in the middle and leave it there.

Southgate

Thanks very much, guys. Appreciated

@james_tennant81

Southgate wrote:

I'm new to mountain biking and I have a hardtail with three settings on the front sus (off, mid, full). I'm pretty sure I'm selecting the setting correctly for everything apart from possibly some climbs. Does anyone have any advice on what setting/s to use when climbing different types of terrain, e.g. rocks, muddy trails, easy stairs etc. I've been generally climbing with the sus on 'off', which, through trial and error, seems to work best (albeit a little harsh at times), but I'd be grateful for any further advice / tips.
Thanks

One of our maintenance videos gives you more info on forks with CTD settings, have a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlnfuETj0wU

Personally, I run mine in (T)rail mode until the bike is going down, when it gets set to (D)ecend. You only really need to lock the forks out if you're on a long fire road climb.

Long_Time_Lurker

Agree with the rest, I only switch to Climb when riding on the road to get to the start of the trail.