Most Mountain Bikers Get This Wrong And They Really Shouldn't | How To Setup A Mountain Bike Fork

Today we want to give you a five-minute breakdown that will give you the knowledge you need to set up your

bike

and also eliminate any risk of you wearing out your high-performance front suspension. Fork

setup

can set the tone for our entire

bike

, some people say we want to bottom out with our

fork

on every ride, but others say how firm we want our front end is based solely on feel. An easier way to think about

this

might be that a firmer

setup

will keep the bike's geometry more consistent as the

fork

enters its travel, increasing the head tube angle.

A bike that rides higher in the fork travel will also ride with a slacker head all the way to the angle. This might be what you want if you are driving on steep terrain. A softer setting will maintain the chassis. and the rider is more stable as the front wheel takes a big hit and forces the fork up in its stroke, the chassis can stay at a more constant height which will help in tracking, so one is better than the other, well it's hard to say and it's

really

about preference, however you see some of the best riders in the world, including Mr Loik Bruni himself, racing hairpins who seem quite happy to deepen their stroke with relatively frequently, so maybe a softer setting is necessary to get the perfect setting, we need a combination. of the correct spring rate, how much pressure is in your air fork and the correct damping.

Today's video is powered by olins, so we're using their forks as an example, so I want you to unwind all the external adjustments to the fully open position simply. The way to think about

this

is like a faucet being completely counterclockwise, it's like a faucet wide open, letting the oil run unrestricted, clockwise is the position more closed, so the oil is restricted below. I want you to look at the recommended settings that can be found. on the bottom leg of the fork here, but take note of the pressure you want to use. Some high-end forks even have more than one air valve; in this case the ramp camera will be at the bottom and the main camera will be at the bottom. to be on top and if you have a throttle chamber, be sure to set it up first to ensure the best performance.

We need the positive and negative chambers to be balanced now, to achieve this we will equalize them by cycling the fork. so just set your main chamber to your desired pressure and push the fork into its travel several times while doing this the main chamber pressure will decrease and continue setting it to your desired PSI until the main chamber pressure doesn't even decrease . after turning the fork this means both chambers now have the same pressure and now let's adjust the sag with a focus on consistency, measure the sag on a level surface in the same position each time, that could even include putting on any gear driving you want. wear or especially if you're riding with a heavy backpack, probably put that on too once we're on the bike, here we're going to turn the fork a few times without touching the brakes because we don't want the fork to lock up.

Either way, once we do that, we can push the O-ring gently into the seal without wobbling. Disassemble the bicycle. Next, we're going to measure the distance between the bottom of the O-ring and the top of the seal from there. you can simply calculate what percentage that number is of the total amount of travel, typically on your shorter travel bikes you could have as few as 15 Trail and Enduro bikes up to 20 percent and if you wanted soft terrain that hugged hills down, branch a little. People can go up to 25 Sac, but a good base is about 20 percent.

You can fine-tune how the air spring supports your weight, especially toward the end of travel with the throttle chamber, if you have a bounce, the damping affects the speed of the suspension. We can go back to full travel, we don't want our fork to be too fast, but if its rebound is too slow the fork can get stuck in its travel which can make the fork feel dull or too firm. Now it's a good way to establish a base. The rebound rate is to compress the fork and then remove your hands. In the ideal situation, the front wheel will not bounce off the ground.

This will give us a great base setting for rebound, but when it comes to compression, there are two to consider. things your entrances and trail entrances we want the bike to support us we don't want to push into the transfer of a jump and feel like we're falling into the front of the bite the high end suspension will allow us to add support through adjustments compression rather than just leaving us with no other option and then drastically increasing the air pressure when we're on the trail, our movements and the way we move our mass around the bike are a relatively slow speed, especially compared to e.g.

Hitting a square Edge at 30 miles per hour now, increasing or reducing the amount of support we feel is achieved through low-speed damping. If you feel your fork dropping while riding on steep terrain or sinking while moving your weight, try increasing the low speed damping here on the dial by turning it clockwise now the fork feels sluggish or uncomfortable, maybe try reducing low speed damping by turning it counterclockwise for high speed damping, it affects the overall oil flow rate through the entire system, but has a particularly large effect on massive hits . that use up a lot of the stroke very quickly, for example going deep from a big drop, Square Edge hits or traversing rough terrain, now one way to think about it, the slow speed settings

really

affect the inputs coming from the rider and the compression Of high speed.

The adjustments affect how the fork adapts to rough terrain. For more information, stay tuned for a video on how to adjust your bike's balance for your first ride. Set both compression settings to medium, counting clicks from closed, and then make any necessary adjustments. Setting up a 4 can be a dynamic and rewarding process, so find a good base setup, but don't be afraid to experiment with these forks. They have three adjustment settings here for high speed compression. You can perhaps think of them as a comfortable cruise party. mode or downhill domination and you can switch between them to suit your trail ride or the conditions of that day.

Thank you all so much for watching today's video on the fork setup, but stay tuned because we also have one for the rear shock. Thank you.