Travel indicator o-rings are the glossy teenage vanity magazines for mountain bikers. The amount of unnecessary frustration those things have caused...

@@VorsprungSuspension invisible ones, the solution must be invisible ones!

I laughed out loud at that! I felt like Steve was talking directly to me.

@@VorsprungSuspension so is it ok that I put an o-ring on my rigid fork? I think it helps me to not bottom out …

Hahahaha really made me laugh, this line was absolute gold.

Agreed!

Some motorbike companies did this in the 80s, I think both Yamaha and Honda had variants of this. One made the compression firmer under braking, the other made it softer because your hands were already loaded up more. Eventually they both gave up on it.

I prefer to set it up so that the dust ring is 10mm from the top of travel after a ride with no "oh shit!" moments.

Not really plausible sorry - there is a huge amount of variation within any of those platforms to the point where no meaningful comparisons can be made of the platforms themselves. Comparing specific bikes is plausible but whole suspension linkage platforms is not.

funny you should ask :)

My next watch actually

How is the fork now?

How's the fork doing dude??

It can help to a certain extent, but it doesn't eliminate it or change the final settled position under consistent braking, and too much LSC definitely hurts bump performance. It does reduce overshoot and particularly in highly dynamic situations (braking hard through rough terrain) more compression damping (particularly in the mid-high speed range) can maintain a higher dynamic ride height.

Nowt wrong wiv sum emergency rations

Definitely some truth to that too! A lot of the geometric aspect I believe can be traced back to dropper posts - funny how quickly geometry evolves when you can descend without getting kicked in the balls by your saddle all the time.

@@VorsprungSuspension I was always willing ot just play with the QR lever there to help with that, but having that a lever away is really nice.

I'm just bit confused with your take ok seat tube angles, could you please elaborate?

hahah calm down mate, we'll make more soon enough. Just been busy :)

@@VorsprungSuspension Now you see me happy again! Your channel is a gem :)

The stanchion diameter doesn't affect the progressiveness. It's determined by the volumes of the positive and negative air chambers (which all change equally as you change stanchion diameter). Your new fork could of course be more progressive anyway but it's not because of the stanchion diameter. If your fork is too linear you can add volume spacers. If it's not linear enough you can remove volume spacers if there are any, or buy a vorsprung luftkappe or smashpot if your fork is compatible :) Wider stanchions mainly affect the torsional rigidity, which could feel slightly harsher but brings the benefit of your wheel actually pointing in the correct direction..

I don't think that's how it works Maciej

Just wanted to add that with increased rigidity there is less binding which should lead to a smoother ride

That just sounds like you've not taken care of your fork.

Been done - Trek tried it years ago in their special 40 cartridges. Combined the weight and lack of easy adjustment of coil with the friction, poor initial spring rate and additional weight of an air cartridge. Not to say it couldn't be done well, but it hasn't really yet.

There are already far more comprehensive texts out there for general suspension theory, such as John Dixon's The Shock Absorber Handbook, and Race Tech's Motorcycle Suspension Bible. They don't contain MTB-specific stuff, but they are brilliant resources on their own.

since they affect pretty much only last third of travel, no. If you have well designed airspring with large negative air chamber you shouldn´t need them as they will only reduce the amount of travel available and make fork/shock feel harsh.

yeah they can by taking them out of the fork and bumping up the pressure a bit instead

@@TJ-gh6cg is correct - more air pressure will help rather than adding spacers, but more air pressure means you need less progression so you'll want to remove spacers rather than add them.

Head to our website and wave your mouse around the screen. It's our newsletter during the times we don't have enough time to do the Tuesday Tune videos (ie summer).

@@VorsprungSuspension Sign me up for more content!

Me too!!

Setup is always a compromise, regardless of rider speed - you're exactly right that if it's not exaggerated it doesn't matter (and the one valid complaint people have about getting performance opinions from slow and light journalists). I think the quality has always been there for anybody willing to pay the price - what I'm actually excited about is the Marzocchi line - imagine solid mid-range Fox dampers on chassis that isn't dictated by weight weenies... that stuff is going to be gold for a big aggressive rider like myself. Half-assed quality is always easy to achieve, and while weight tends to be correlated with that, it's isn't 1:1 and too often well-heeled riders use that as a proxy for quality, which is why top performing components have a lot of money spent on extra machining steps that don't benefit tubby Clydes like myself... which is why my best setup is actually a reworked Yari running a Luftkappe and a Charger damper kit.

@@tehllama42 I think we are on the same page mate.

N+0, where N is the amount you use.

Need more travelssss

I suppose the whole "cut the o-ring off" thing was basically one way of saying "make it feel good and be happy with it whether it's using full travel or not" so your setup sounds pretty reasonable to me. The Mondrakers aren't particularly remarkable one way or another regarding axle path and leverage rate - most pedalable bikes (bar the high pivot ones) tend to feel a bit harsh and overwhelmed in really rough stuff compared to DH bikes for sure. There is realistically no replacement for displacement when it comes to running over stuff. As Seb Stott put it a while back - "Suspension travel: more is more."

I've been in that range, and accepted a compromised answer - you can give up some mid-range support (and I'm talking even after the improvement of a Luftkappe) and lean a bit more on the LSC and drop air pressure a touch then add a spacer. The near-sag performance in normal cases is the same, it's still basically impossible to use that last bit of travel (still feels good in the bank), and when I'm getting that same sensation of getting hung up on successive hits, the front is tracking a bit easier through stuff and I can retain a little bit more momentum. I kinda did the same on the back, but the band-aid there is adding a volume spacer to + and - side, and actually leaning on HSC with reduced LSC to try and keep that rear axle more active. Again, there's no free lunch and it bobs like a mofo on flat trails and pavement, but if I ignore that I'm still faster everywhere. I'm on a similar bike (slack 150/130mm 29er), but I run 25-28% sag up front with 30% out back and prefer that very non-linear fork feel... so no way this will 100% answer the questions for you, but it's an approach that overall worked for me (or at least led me to a compromise I was happier with).

Thanks for the answers guys. Seems like my feeling that a bit more travel might not be bad was probably correct. I really like the snappy yet stable feeling of the long 140/150mm bike though...always compromises..

@@TJ-gh6cg For my part, improving the fork seemed to help everything, but doesn't detract a lot from the overall snappiness.

It's a busy time of year in Whistler...he's probably going mad in the shop 🤪

I would not agree with that at all. The damper's job is to prevent excessive motion and resonant vibration to keep the bike and rider stable. Compared to the spring, it does very little to reduce bottoming out (especially in current forks where it does almost nothing whatsoever); damping forces in MTB suspension are a small fraction of the peak spring forces. Hydraulic bottom out systems are a different matter as you can get a lot of force out of them without overdamping the majority of the stroke.

@@VorsprungSuspension Thank you for taking your time to reply. I have been thinking about this alot as there are so many people in the mtb world that have an oppinion on shocks but a lot of them are seem clueless. You seem to know your stuff though. I don't agree the least bit though about the damper only being there to prevent vibration. It is about stopping excessive motion, especially at higher compresion velocities. Here is how I'm thikning. It's all about energy absorbtion (force times displacement), not force. Lets assume a drop of 1m with a bike plus rider weighing 100kg. The energy that needs to be absorbed in that is about 980J (E=Mgh), or 490J if we assume a 50/50 distribution between front and rear shock. The rear shock has a 55mm stroke with a 550 spring. The spring in that case soaks up about 145J of that energy (which is then removed by the damper at rebound). The remaining 345J needs to adsorbed by the damper. Increasing the spring rate to 650 the energy absorbed by the spring is 172J. Not a hughe difference, the majority of the work i still done by the shock. Upping the spring to 650 will cause other problems with sag etc. Sure, as the velocity decreases towards the end of the shock stroke the spring becomes more dominant in soaking up the last bit of energy. But if you are dependant on spring here I belive you are underdamped to start with. The spring mostly is for setting and mainitaing sag/ride height. An air shock is different with the porgression of those. There you can playaround with pressure and tokens to prevent bottoming out. However, that'll make the ride alot harsher the more the shock is compressed. Lets say in a banked corner or in a compresssion/dip in the trail. This prevents optimum performance of the damping throughout the shock stroke. The progressive nature of an air shock is both good and bad. It'll definitely make rebound damping way more complicated. I haven't done the math but I suspect that the rebound damping on air shock is massive compared to a coil. You should know? To me it feels like the shock manufacturers are taking the negative side of air shocks and turning it around to something positive. The parallel I draw here is how we do it on the sleds if we constantly bottom out, we don't change springs if we bottom out, we add compression damping, if adding clicks isn't sufficent we re-shim. Depending och shock design the slows speed compression can have a massive effect. Of course, if the spiring is too soft so low ride height causing bottom outs it's a different story. Put a damper and a spring in the dyno and log force displacement, preferably at constant velocity. You'll see a flat line on the spring and as you increase velocity and it goes over a critical point the damper will be stiffer than the spring. The area under the curve is the energy absorbed. Please change my mind......

@@IIIkGT cyclical motion of any kind is vibration. When you say "excessive motion", that is vibration, because it returns. I'm not saying that you could not reduce travel usage with HSC, I'm saying that we usually choose not to use that avenue as the primary form of bottoming resistance with MTBs, because the rigid sprung mass is very low and the rider is far from rigid. Compared to a sled, which has about 200kg of (essentially rigid) sprung mass, a bike has about 5% as much. This brings us to three reasons why we don't recommend trying to increase HSC on modern MTB forks in order to prevent bottoming: 1. In order to get sufficient HSC that it makes any significant difference to bottoming resistance, you need to have enough that the wheel vibration mode is way overdamped - ie the wheel can't move freely enough relative to the rigid sprung mass of the bike. That causes harshness to the rider because the damping forces and input energy from bumps now have far more force with which to accelerate & vibrate the sprung mass. On a sled, there is 200kg of sprung mass to accelerate before the rider feels much. 2. Because most MTB forks now are air sprung, they have a degree of pneumatic damping - they act as a heat pump due to the difference in adiabatic vs isothermal compression. In other words, increasing the spring rate on an air sprung fork increases your effective damping rate in direct proportion. This effect is reduced quite a bit with coil forks, but there is still some significant spring & damping coming from the compression of the internal volume of the fork itself. 2. Because of points 1 and 2, all MTB fork dampers currently have VERY light HSC damping. Changing a Grip2 or Charger2/2.1/3 HSC setting from minimum to maximum, with stock valving, makes negligible difference to how much travel you use, even though it roughly doubles the compressoin damping compared to the lightest setting, because double nothing is still nothing. Because of this, we have to make practical recommendations. You can revalve a fork with way firmer HSC and it'll begin to limit the travel, but it'll also hurt your hands. With most stock forks though, the compression adjustment does not do much. They used to do a lot more - I think we have the MTBR forums to thank for the now pretty much useless range of compression adjustment. Shocks are not identical, because some of them do have significantly more effective HSC adjusters for starters, but the same principles apply. Furthermore, you can't really use particle energy absorption approximations for mountain bikes, because the rider buckles under a certain amount of force and absorbs more of the energy themselves. Otherwise people would die from jumping BMXes.