Lack of Rebound

Symptoms:

o Forks are plush, but increasing speed causes loss of control and traction

o The motorcycle wallows and tends to run wide exiting the turn causing fading traction and loss of control.

o When taking a corner a speed, you experience front-end chatter, loss of traction and control.

o Aggressive input at speed lessons control and chassis attitude suffers.

o Front end fails to recover after aggressive input over bumpy surfaces.

Solution: Insufficient rebound. Increase rebound “gradually” until control and traction are optimized and chatter is gone.

Too Much Rebound

Symptoms:

o Front end feels locked up resulting in harsh ride.

o Suspension tucks in and fails to return, giving a harsh ride. Typically after the first bump, the bike will skip over subsequent bumps and want to tuck the front.

o With acceleration, the front end will tank slap or shake violently due to lack of front wheel tire contact.

Solution: Too much rebound. Decrease rebound “gradually” until control and traction are optimized.

Lack of Compression

Symptoms:

o Front-end dives severely, sometimes bottoming out over heavy bumps or during aggressive breaking.

o Front feels soft or vague similar to lack of rebound.

o When bottoming, a clunk is heard. This is due to reaching the bottom of fork travel.

Solution: Insufficient compression. Increase “gradually” until control and traction are optimized.

Too Much Compression

Symptom:

o Front end rides high through the corners, causing the bike to steer wide. It should maintain the pre-determined sag, which will allow the steering geometry to remain constant.

Solution: Decrease compression “gradually” until bike neither bottoms nor rides high.

Symptom:

o Front end chatters or shakes entering turns. This is due to incorrect oil height and/or too much low speed compression damping.

Solution: First, verify that oil height is correct. If correct, then decrease compression “gradually” until chattering and shaking ceases.

Symptom:

o Bumps and ripples are felt directly in the triple clamps and through the chassis. This causes the front wheel to bounce over bumps.

Solution: Decrease compression “gradually” until control is regained.

Symptom:

o Ride is generally hard, and gets even harder when braking or entering turns.

Solution: Decrease compression “gradually” until control is regained.

Adjustment Locations: Rear Shock

Rebound adjustment (if applicable) is located at the bottom of the shock. Compression adjustment (if applicable) is located on the reservoir. Spring prelude is located at the top of the shock.

Shock: Lack of Rebound

Symptoms:

o The ride will feel soft or vague and as speed increases, the rear end will want to wallow and/or weave over bumpy surfaces and traction suffers.

o Loss of traction will cause rear end to pogo or chatter due to shock returning too fast on exiting a corner.

Solution: Insufficient rebound – Increase rebound until wallowing and weaving disappears and control and traction are optimized.

Shock: Too Much Rebound

Symptoms:

o Ride is harsh, suspension control is limited and traction is lost.

o Rear end will pack in, forcing the bike wide in corners, due to rear squat. It will slow steering because front end is riding high.

o When rear end packs in, tires generally will overheat and will skip over bumps.

o When chopping throttle, rear end will tend to skip or hop on entries.

Solution: Too much rebound. Decrease rebound “gradually” until harsh ride is gone and traction is regained. Decrease rebound to keep rear end from packing.

Shock: Lack of Compression

Symptoms:

o The bike will not turn in entering a turn.

o With bottoming, control and traction are lost.

o With excessive rear end squat, when accelerating out of corners, the bike will tend to steer wide.

Solution: Insufficient compression. Increase compression “gradually until traction and control is optimized and/or excessive rear end squat is gone.

Shock: Too Much Compression

Symptoms:

o Ride is harsh, but not as bad as too much rebound. As speed increases, so does harshness.

o There is very little rear end squat. This will cause loss of traction/sliding. Tire will overheat.

o Rear end will want to kick when going over medium to large bumps.

Solution: Decrease compression until harshness is gone. Decrease compression until sliding stops and traction is regained.

So Saturday was supposed to be another Beech race. Going into the end of the week, I just wasn’t feeling the race. Its kind of odd, but with so many races available to the SE now the scene is kind of diluting its self. Its about a 2.5 hr drive for me and I had procrastinated heading over until Saturday morning. I was having a great evening with Wyatt and Meghann and I just wasn’t that into going. Then I got word that the track didn’t look to great and I waffled even more. But late in the night I decided to go. I love racing DH and it was just another day trip. Then around 4am I got a text from my mother that my dad was in the hospital with an elevated potassium level. So it seemed all signed pointed to not going. Later in the afternoon I did a 95 mile ride from the house on the 530xc-w. See post below. Anyway, I’m glad I didn’t go to the race. Plus I can’t keep going to every race for the rest of my life. It was good to miss one.

So then on Sunday I convinced myself to go a hare scramble down near the Ocoee. Late in the evening I went over to Mark’s house to help him fix his front brake which had turned into quite a mystery. We worked on that thing for hours, bought new tools, and coated the floor in DOT 3 brake fluid until about 9pm. Just when all hope was lost, we go it bled. It seemed so hopeless that I declared if we could get it fixed, I would stay local and ride with Mark, Ben and Jay. So again I skipped a race and stayed close to ride our awesome terrain with good friends. It was another good choice. Mark has some footage posted at Ride Made.

Later in the afternoon I headed over to Windrock to grab a few shuttles with Joey and Buddy. It was hot, but we kept a pretty quick pace on turning around. I seem to be a worse rider in training, but I keep having some of my best results to date. There are a lot of things going into that equation. Part of it is I don’t think the competition is as deep as it was a couple of years ago. Part of it is I think I am getting to another plateau. I think I can go faster but I can’t keep together at that pace until I race and slow it down a bit. I always go harder in practice/training that race runs. Anyway, I did a couple runs, saved a pretty good potential crash, and had fun. Looking forward to Saturday’s big crew.