Dammit’s adventures in mountain biking

In other news, my 27.5" rim arrived from Light Bicycle. Mullet ahoy!

Who will build the wheel?
And what hub?

what hub?

Rohloff

I'm really surprised you need a spring rate that high, if you're only 4kg heavier than me. I know it's different shocks, frames, curves, travel, etc. and hard to make direct comparison, but that's a big difference.

Maybe you're way gnarlier than me though, who knows 🤷🏼‍♂️

I've also only owned a coil shock for less than 10 days, so my knowledge is admittedly very limited

I was going to bring this up the other day. I’m 85kg and have a 450 spring on my transition patrol. I’ve only felt it bottom out once and that was overshooting the drop on the dmr line at rogate and landing flat.

Be interesting to get all the coil bikes together and do a little back to back - mines XL, which I think would suit you chaps also?

It's possible that the O-ring is lying, of course.

Steve from Vorsprung looked at the photo of the two coils side by side and said that from the looks of it I've clearly bottomed both coils out, but that's no surprise as the progressive part of the CC Valt is almost all the way at the end of the stroke, so in his view they're the same spring rate, effectively.

What's the rear wheel travel on your bikes in comparison to the stroke of the shock?

Maybe I've accidentally set my scales to "encouraging" rather than "accurate".

Who will build the wheel?

And what hub?

Pete at Rat Race, and a DT Swiss 240 EXP CL.

Welcome to my life, if you ever get hold of an actual person, they are nice but can't help. "trust the process" I hear a lot.

What's the rear wheel travel on your bikes in comparison to the stroke of the shock?

125mm travel on 50mm stroke.
I'm tempted to put the 400lbs back on, as I didn't feel anything close to bottoming out on a 450 in Surrey at the weekend. I didn't do any jumps though.

Be interesting to look at how the mechanical advantage varies through the stroke of the suspension- if you have a lot of progression built into the design it will perform very differently from my totally linear frame.

I can't find any info particularly, other than Cotic saying they reduced the progression to allow a bigger window of tuning for lighter riders. Somewhere, I think I read it went from 28 to 22%, but I may have made that up

It’s a funny one, if you read the reviews of the Starlings they’re all largely positive- and that’s a totally linear suspension design usually with a coil spring. I’m hopeful that it’s just a matter of getting the correct spring weight.

For Pete

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For an all too brief moment, the world makes sense again

I'm really surprised you need a spring rate that high, if you're only 4kg heavier than me. I know it's different shocks, frames, curves, travel, etc. and hard to make direct comparison, but that's a big difference.

I often find this with my friends bikes, similar travel and body weight yet very different spring rates. It's nothing to worry about.
I have a Propain Rage dh bike, when I bought it I used the TF tuned calculator and it said I needed a 400lb spring. In use it was ridiculous, sat at about 60% sag. Turned out that particular frame has some unusual characteristics and Propain have their own spring calculator that put me on a 550lb spring.

Did TF supply you with the reducer spring clips to use the Valt spring on a fox shock?

You don’t need them for a 2021 Fox.

Someone on the Pace Facebook group with the Bike Checker suspension software has mapped the leverage ratio through the stroke - looks a bit more detailed than mine, although I don't know how they took the measurements:

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~5.6 progression until 84mm travel, then slightly regressive for the remainder, although I wonder whether, with such a small variation, the progression/regression is detectable.

A Hightower is 24% progressive right the way through the stroke, apparently.

Apparently that chart was created by J-Tech.

Are you sitting too far back? (Putting more weight on the rear suspension).

Generally I don't sit down whilst riding a downhill section of trail, I don't think it would end well.

550lb spring is fun, more testing to come.

Love all this metrics talk @Dammit it’s even more obsessive than motorbike track day forums.